


Unlimited Edition

by Ranni



Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Captivity, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Dark Science, Definitely not Endgame compliant, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mourning, Not canon-compliant, Protective Clint Barton, Protective Tony Stark, Sick Clint Barton, Sick Tony Stark, Suicidal Ideation, Team as Family, Temporary Character Death, The author would also appreciate a hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 15:45:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16498418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: When Tony Stark disappeared the Avengers scoured the earth for him, and when his body was discovered they buried him. They mourned him. And as terrible as everything had seemed, as much as they grieved his loss, none of it compared to the horror of the day that Tony came back again.- or -Clint and Tony are definitely not okay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The radiant MillyVeil and I are engaged in a mini fanfic version of NaNoWriMo. There's no way I'll ever get to 50,000 words, but I'll get *somewhere*, damnit!

*

There’s a sweaty man selling fruit out of the back of a truck, and Clint finds himself laughing at the naked hopefulness on Tony’s face. He pulls a five dollar bill out of the envelope—which doesn’t hold nearly enough cash now, that thought sending another sharp lance of fear through his chest—and hands it over. Tony snatches it with a grin, as happy as a kid at Christmas, and clambers out of the truck, slamming the door behind him.

Clint can’t hear the conversation but follows it well enough, Tony gesturing feverishly, arguing for a better deal, the other man obviously beyond caring, happy enough to make a sale. Tony glances over and raises a triumphant eyebrow at Clint as the man keeps dumping oranges into a plastic sack. It seems that every iteration of Tony Stark is a shrewd negotiator.

The thought kills Clint’s answering smile before it even blooms, but he works his mouth into the proper motion anyway, in case Tony can see. The expression feels strange and false, as if his own features are spread over an unfamiliar skull, and Clint resists the sudden impulse to press his fingers to skin, to stare at himself in the review mirror and see what it looks like.

Tony returns, all jubilant energy, and Clint pulls out his pocketknife, cab of the truck quickly filling with an overwhelming smell of citrus. Clint narrows his eyes and juts his chin meaningfully toward the man’s cardboard, hand lettered _100%_ _Homegrown_ sign as he peels a blue supermarket sticker off his orange, rolling and flicking it in Tony’s direction. Tony shrugs, determined to find no fault, and it doesn’t really matter anyway; it’s food not from a can or a box or a fast food window, and that’s good enough for now.

Tony keeps shoving orange slices into his mouth and making happy noises, quiet _Mmm_ s of appreciation woven amongst the rustling sound of the plastic sack as he shoves peels inside. Clint’s examining his third wedge for seeds when he spots the orange seller leaning on the side of his own truck, watching them from across the parking lot. His hand stops halfway to his mouth, the fragile happiness of the moment evaporating in an instant.

The guy is most likely just hot and bored, wondering why they haven’t driven away yet, only looking at the truck because looking at anything is more interesting than staring into space. He probably can’t even make out their faces properly with the distance and glare from the windshield.

Or maybe he can. Maybe he’s recognized Tony. Maybe he watched Captain America’s speech, maybe he’s seen one of the countless programs memorializing Iron Man, journalists and politicians and every random person losing their collective minds, the world mourning the loss of its most creative, brilliant thinker. Clint has been so careful all these weeks but it might come crashing down right here and now, all because an orange just sounded so damned good, and he’d wanted to make Tony happy, even if all of it could only last a moment.

Tony looks from Clint’s hand, paused in the air, and follows his eyeline to the man across the parking lot, now busily rearranging his fruit. “He was okay,” he says cautiously. “Just a regular guy looking to make a buck.”

Clint drops the rest of his orange into the sack, ignoring Tony’s unhappy sound, and throws the truck into gear, suddenly seeing it all so clearly. His foot, heavy against the accelerator. Tony’s panicky protests. The man’s face, eyes wide and mouth gaping, cowering as the truck bears down on him, struck immobile with fear, the way Clint’s seen a hundred times before. A thud, a crunch of bones. Guilt, and also relief, no need to worry about what the man might have seen, that he might put together later, looking to make another buck by selling the information to an eager news outlet.

“ _Clint_. Come on.”

Tony’s voice is both pleading and guarded, his dark eyes moving restlessly between Clint and the fruit vendor, undoubtedly thinking about what happened with the woman from before, she with the clicking camera phone, braying _Don’t I know you, Mister_.

“Don’t worry about that guy. He’s nothing. We’re moving on anyway. Right? Hitting the open road.” Tony buckles his seatbelt, nodding sharply at the snap, as if everything’s decided. “We’ll go north, maybe. How do you feel about north? Clint?”

“As a direction or—”

The words are even harder to form than making himself loosen his grip on the steering wheel, Clint’s fingers aching and unwilling as he attempts to straighten them. But he’s thawing out, bleeding back into himself a little, Tony’s chatter pulling him out of the white-hot raging panic that seems to fuel everything these days. Because maybe he’s right. Maybe the fruit guy hadn’t noticed anything. Maybe he’s just a regular person. Maybe all the danger is in Clint’s own mind and everything is actually okay.

Tony’s still watching warily, waiting, and Clint knows he’s taking too long to finish the thought, too long to play it off as one of the quips he’d been able to shoot off so easily once upon a time.

“—or as a concept?” he grits out finally.

 “Both.” Tony settles back into his seat, happy enough to ignore the halting speech and play along. “We’ll see the land of a thousand lakes. And moose. Do some ice fishing and wear those hats.” He waggles his hand vaguely at the side of his head. “You know, whatever they call those fur hats with the ear flap thingies.”

“An ushanka,” Clint tells him, pulling away, surprised to know something Tony doesn’t.

He doesn’t look in the rear view mirror to see if the fruit vendor is watching them, if he’s memorizing their license plate number, if he’s pulling out a phone and dialing.

 

*

They’ve gone only a few miles before Clint has to pull over and throw up his few pieces of orange as Tony frowns and thumps him companionably on the back. Clint accepts the last bottle of water without argument, wincing against the acidic burn in his throat.

“I almost killed that guy,” he says finally, voice flat even to his own ears. Part of him— _most_ of him—still wants to, measuring the world in nothing more than potential threats, insisting it's the only way to be sure, the only way to keep safe. “Just like that lady back in Columbus.”

“She was alive when we left her.  And he’s alive now.  Both of them are okay.”  Tony scrubs his face with his palms, elbows braced on his knees. He takes a deep breath and shifts as if to sit back up but then just doesn’t, head dropping back into his hands. “And so are we. Let’s keep moving, huh? North, right?”

“North,” Clint echoes.

Tony sighs again, shoulders drooped and muttering an almost inaudible “ _Christ_ ”, and for the first time it occurs to Clint that Tony might not like him very much anymore. Considering all that Clint has done and given up to keep the man alive, it hurts a little.

Of course, it’d hurt a lot more if Clint believed that the person sitting beside him was actually Tony Stark.

 

**

When Tony disappeared, the Avengers scoured the earth for him. And when they forced themselves to sleep and eat JARVIS kept looking, combing through every public digital image, every word on the internet, calculating the odds of every conceivable scenario, drawing larger and larger amounts of power in the search for his creator.

When Tony’s body was discovered they buried him. They mourned him. And as terrible as everything had seemed, as much as they grieved his loss, none of it compared to the horror of the day that Tony came back again.

 

*

Clint cranks the handle all the way to the right, far past the point where the water feels uncomfortable, closes his eyes. The water pressure in this motel shower is crap, but it still feels like heaven drumming across his back. It’s even _better_ than heaven, actually, because it almost feels like the old days, when Clint showered every day. At a whim, really, with hot water and soap and fresh clothing and everything clean.

He stays under the spray far too long, his skin tight and lobster red when he finally steps out, combing his hair with his fingers, careful to avoid looking in the mirror. He knows what he looks like, gaunt and haggard but it’s always an unpleasant shock every time, to catch his reflection in the mirror and flinch at what he’s become, what he’s allowed himself to become. He winds a towel around his hips and slides down against the door; the bathroom is overly hot but the floor is lovely and cool, and suddenly there is nothing Clint wants more than to never leave this room, but to stay here. It’s a white, anonymous bathroom and he can imagine he’s somewhere else. Not at his apartment in the Tower, perhaps—that bathroom was all black and chrome and with two sinks and even a goddamned couch in it—but anywhere else. It could be any of the motels he’s ever been in, and after years with SHIELD he’s been in a _lot_.

He closes his eyes and can almost believe that Phil Coulson is on the other side of the door, knocking loudly at Natasha’s playful insistence, mock scolding loudly that other people still wanted to shower, that there’d better not be towels all over the floor, that fresh water was finite resource, and _are you even listening to me, Clint Barton_??

“Be out in a sec,” Clint whispers.

He knows that Phil isn’t out there, that Phil’s been in his grave for years now, but he still wants to say it, wants to pretend for a moment that he could open this bathroom door and he would be somewhere else, some _when_ else, that he could exchange all these problems for a set of older ones. Ones he’s already dealt with and lived through, ones easily handled again.

 

**

Bruce and Clint were in the gym when the call came, the panicked attendant from the garage gibbering about ghost and zombies and _oh fuck, get down here_. They ran, Bruce barefoot from yoga and Clint pausing only long enough to grab his bow and quiver, not knowing then that it would be the last time that he would willingly reach for them.

A small crowd had gathered, crying and shouting but no one doing actually doing anything but gape at the man huddled on the ground, dying. They never understood how he’d made it so far in that condition, emaciated and gasping and terrified beyond belief, but he had, stumbling into the lowest level of the Tower fueled only by wits and guts and grim determination.

Bruce gathered Tony up in his arms but Clint could do nothing but push the gawkers away as Pepper came tearing onto the scene. Clint had his bow but his hands were useless, his skills were nothing, unable to do doing anything but stand there as Tony died again, as Bruce wept, as Pepper screamed.

 

*

He must have fallen asleep or just skipped out on consciousness completely, because it seems like only a moment later that Clint is blinking awake suddenly.

Everything is in sharper focus than before, the bathroom no longer filled with steam, his hair and skin dry, the floor and door freezing against his legs and back. The few moments of disorientation are chased by a sharp and all-too familiar pang of despair; it’s been a good while since he's lost time, and he’d let himself believe it was over, that it wouldn’t happen again.

 _An episode_ , Steve always called it as he peeled Clint off the floors of the range and hallways, out of other bathrooms. He always said that, as if Clint’s life, _all_ their lives, were just a series of wacky adventures, something to be brushed off, something to be minimized. The words and concerns Bruce voiced were scarier, but _no one_ could be frightened of something called an episode. Clint can imagine Steve standing over him now, all earnest concern, hands first outstretched and then reaching, pulling, pushing, manhandling Clint Barton into something more like himself.

 _It’s okay it’s just another episode don’t worry come on Clint you’ll be alright_.

Clint lumbers awkwardly to his feet, knees and back protesting as he makes his way to the sink and pulls the wrapper from one of the plastic cups with shaky hands, eyes still carefully down to avoid the mirror. Water sounds good, water sounds great, and Clint lets it run while he gulps and refills the cup over and over. It’s not until he finally nudges the tap closed again that he hears a faint, frantic _thump thump thump_ and realization slots into place.

“Oh _shit_.”

Clint throws open the bathroom door and his heart nearly stops at the empty room, only to stutter back to life at seeing Tony on the floor instead of on the bed where Clint had left him, pale and shaking and looking a bit like he’s been crying. Clint knows firsthand how painful being handcuffed from behind, hands to ankles, can be, and Tony’s been this way God knows how long while he was busy wigging out—having an _episode_ , rather, just an episode—in the bathroom. Tony cranes his head up awkwardly, shouting muffled protests until Clint carefully pulls the wadded up pair of socks out of his mouth.

“Goddamn you,” Tony rasps, working his jaw painfully, his throat dry and wrecked. He must have called out to Clint, and giving up on that must have screamed, hoping to catch the attention of anyone passing by in the hallway. “Hours. It’s been _hours_!”

“I’m so sorry.” Clint opens the handcuffs and Tony cries out in pain as his limbs finally fall away from one another, gasping against the carpet as his circulation wakes up every screaming nerve. “I kinda lost track of time.” He rubs at Tony’s arms and shoulders, the muscles hard knots beneath his fingers, and can’t help but add, “But I’m pretty sure it hasn’t been _hours_.”

“It was hours!” Tony jerks away from Clint’s hands, face pale but thunderous, and if he weren’t struggling against the agony of blood rushing back into his limbs he’d probably be throwing a few punches. “Hours spent choking on your damned dirty socks and thinking you were _dead_ _!"_

Clint retrieves the cup of water from the bathroom and holds it patiently to Tony’s mouth, feeling more in control now, as if his calm can only exist in contrast to Tony’s furious anxiety. “Why the hell would you think I was dead?”

 “Because I thought you’d killed yourself in there, you crazy bastard!”

“Don’t be stupid.” Clint pushes up from the floor and walks over to the bed, leaving Tony on the carpet, still shaking and groaning and stretching his limbs painfully. “Anyway, it’s your own fault that you need to be tied up.”

It happened their first week on the run, and it had mostly been Clint’s own fault, not realizing that Tony was already getting stronger, that he was careful enough to snatch someone’s phone, that he was desperate enough to call Pepper. If he had called JARVIS they might have been alright, but sweet, sad Pepper Potts brought the Avengers and SHIELD crashing in on them within minutes, as they’d been lying in wait the whole time, hidden close by. They had almost been caught that day, getting away only due to more good luck than Clint cared to acknowledge. And as contrite and shaken as Tony had been at the time, Clint knows there’s no way he won’t talk himself into a repeat performance at the first opportunity, that he won’t tell himself it was all just a huge misunderstanding, that it would be okay the next time.

 “Fuck you, Barton,” Tony snarls now, the hurt in his eyes from more than strained muscles. “Really. _Fuck_ you.”

 “Yeah, well, fuck you too.” Clint roots through the duffel bag, looking for clean clothes, or the cleanest clothes they have, anyway. He sniffs at a pair of shorts, frowning. “There’s a washer and dryer downstairs.” Tony growls in frustration at the sloppy subject change, dropping his head back to the floor but Clint ignores him, pulling the rest of the clothes from the bag. “I saw them when we were checking in, and a coin machine, too.” It would feel so great to wear something clean again, almost as great as the shower had felt.

 “Fuck you,” Tony repeats, the words a muffled sob against the carpet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long to update! There are two factors to blame--my crippling self doubt and my stupid middle finger, which I recently slammed in a car door and broke. It's been terribly painful to type, but if you have to break a finger I do suggest the middle one, because it's been fun having a valid reason to drive around with it extended upward all the time. 
> 
> It's probably more obvious in this chapter, but since the story is confusing enough as is, I'll go ahead and clarify that there are two timelines going on. Everything in present tense is happening now, and everything in past tense happened in, you know, the past. Thanks for reading!

**

“What if one of them is really him,” Clint kept asking, but none of the others wanted to hear that. They’d searched for, buried, and mourned Tony Stark, and now they wanted it to be over, wanted to be able to move on.

They weren’t life model decoys. They weren’t even clones, as far as SHIELD could tell. They turned up in random places, all wearing the same face and clothes, either dying or already dead. After the fourth Tony appeared SHIELD took over the unpleasant task of rounding them up, and the team allowed it. No one had to know when another turned up, no one had to think about it. Fury told the Avengers that all they found were nothing but dying shells, that they had none of Tony’s memories or intelligence.

Of course, none of that was true.

 

*

They fly down roads so far from towns and highways that they’re numbered instead of named, that they are compacted dirt rather than pavement or even gravel. Clint is driving much too fast but neither is worried—Tony because he rightly assumes Clint has taken part in dozens of high speed car chases, and Clint because he cut his teeth driving on roads just like this one. He's never been here before but he has an instinct for these county roads, cutting through forests and farms, a secret network of American pathways. 

Tony leans out the window and cups his hands to moo at the cows in the fields, the radio blaring behind him. The music is not what either of them would prefer, but it’s loud and makes it hard to talk or even think, which is exactly what both of them _do_ want.

Tony looks exhausted and a little wild around the eyes, but he's been pretty forgiving of the whole tied-up-and-forgotten incident the night before. That bothers Clint a little—the  _real_ Tony could hold a grudge over a lot less for a whole lot longer—but perhaps maybe having no other friends has made Stark more inclined to stay on the good side of the one person he does have.

 “I thought cows had horns. And bells around their necks.”  Tony leans even further out the window, and Clint tightens his hands around the steering wheel to resists the impulse to grab his waistband and haul him back. “Where’s your _bell,_ Bessie??” Tony almost has to scream the words to be heard above the radio and engine, laughing when a cow lows back crankily.

“You’re gonna fall out,” Clint says, relieved when Tony finally settles back against his seat.

Clint pushes the engine harder, the truck shuddering beneath them. There’s nothing in front of them but more of the same landscape, and there's nothing visible behind, dust billowing from the wheels in a cream colored wave. The radio shrieks out a pop song, small rocks rattle in the wheel wells, and Tony’s still laughing.  

 

**

Clint thought he’d done a good job, laying it all out, how he believed SHIELD had taken Tony, was holding him hostage and pumping out copies. It was all about the tech, of course—what amazing toys could be made by twenty or thirty Tony Starks working tirelessly in twenty or thirty different SHIELD laboratories. Clint had no proof, but years of watching the shadowy organization skirt the boundaries of law and morality were evidence enough, but what he saw as a reasonable argument the team viewed as paranoid ranting created from whole cloth. He hadn’t been prepared for Steve's complete disbelief, for Bruce's worry, for Natasha's horrified pity, or for the way they dragged him to SHIELD immediately and told Fury everything. 

Having personally served as the final solution to most of SHIELD’s problems, Clint was convinced they’d silence him with either a bullet to the head or life in a small dark cell, but their actual response was even worse. Instead of throwing him out SHIELD forced him to stay, pumping him full of medication and sticking him in an office, hoping he would get better, or at least still be useful somehow. It did little to dispel the notion that Fury was hiding something, but Clint had learned to be more careful, learned to stop voicing those thoughts aloud, learned to say all the right things instead.

_I was just tired. I was very confused. I’m feeling much better now._

He wasn’t feeling better; he wasn’t feeling _anything._ The side effects of the drugs were the terrible—his appetite evaporated into nothingness, his hands tremored constantly, and there was a hazy halo around every light. He didn't talk about any of those things either. It all felt as though he had died and everyone just refused to acknowledge it, forcing what was left of Clint Barton to get up and walk and talk and be nice to everyone, playing at life when all he wanted to do was lie down and be still.

But the others, especially Steve, wouldn’t allow it. Steve questioned endlessly, insisted on progress reports, watched Clint swallow pills, cooked group dinners and parked them all around tables to eat in uncomfortable silence. He’d always approached his leadership responsibilities with a _we’re all in this together_ sort of stance, but he happily allowed Tony to be the snarky one, Natasha the grumpy one, Nick Fury the villain of every story. And in contrast the captain enjoyed the reputation as the team marshmallow, but Clint had always known better, knew that earnest face hid a hard edge that appeared when the chips were down, when talking and compromise was no longer enough. It wasn’t a surprise at all Steve appeared at Clint’s apartment door that morning, bow held in one clenched fist, announcing a great idea.

 _It’s just a little tough love_ , Clint told himself after the first hour, as he squared his screaming shoulders and exhaled shakily, loosing the arrow. It was just a little tough love because nothing else was working, and this forced activity was really in perfect alignment with Steve’s other declarations— _just give things more time, just an episode_ , _just something to get through._ And now this— _just a little tough love_.

The arrow hit the edge of the center ring, and Clint allowed himself a flash of relief and disappointment before the target was whisked away and replaced with another.

“Again,” Steve said, and Clint fired off another shot without a second thought, the rhythm still as automatic and natural to him as breathing, even if ached, even if it brought no joy.

"Again."

“I beg your pardon.”

Though JARVIS’ low tone was obviously intended not to startle it had the opposite effect, Steve flinching noticeably and Clint’s arrow veering a good four inches to the right. They didn’t hear from JARVIS other than routine household announcements or the flat relaying of messages, the utter lifelessness answering the unasked question of whether an artificial intelligence could grieve the loss of its creator.

“I must express some concern over the continuation of this activity.”

 “What? It’s fine,” Steve said tersely. He scowled up at the ceiling and flapped an impatient hand in Clint’s direction. “He’s fine.”

Clint nodded along gamely because Steve needed this, needed to feel he was being proactive. No one asked Clint for anything anymore and he was glad to help one of the few friends he had left, glad to do something besides sleep or go to SHIELD and pretend to work. 

“I do not think that—”

“That’ll be all, JARVIS.” Both Steve and Clint's eyes were glued to the errant arrow, stuck in the outer ring of the target, somehow an accusation of their mutual failure. "You'll just have to try harder," Steve said, as if holding a bow and going through the motions could make Clint Hawkeye again, any more than frowning lectures could make him Captain America. "If you want to be an Avenger you'll just have to try harder."

 

**

Some time later Natasha and Bruce burst in, and Bruce was raging at Steve while Clint turned automatically to break down his bow and put it away properly; there would be no repeat performance.  He was still fumbling with the string when Natasha tore the bow from his hands and shoved him hard with both hands, pushing him away from Steve, whose flat affect had disappeared into frantic apologies. It was one thing to be manhandled by Steve or Bruce or Nick Fury, but quite another when the offender was Natasha, and Clint moved with her willingly, letting his feet skip backward in time with hers moving forward. She kept shoving until Clint’s back connected with a solid wall and then pulled a door closed behind her, cocooning them in sudden darkness, the only sound muffled shouting outside, their mingled breathing inside.

Natasha tugged and Clint slid down with her to the floor, his head bracketed by a wall and what might have been a shelf. She twined her legs through his, gripping and twisting his shirt possessively with one shaking hand.

“We’re in a closet.” He kept blinking, eyes searching for any pinpoint of light.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“I didn’t know the range even _had_ a closet.” Clint pulled the quiver from throbbing shoulders and shifted off something digging into his hip, ghosting his fingers over a dustpan full of spent shells.

He felt good, really good, for the first time in a long while, feeding off the endorphins from exercise and pain and the coiled rage pouring from Natasha in waves.  They had spent more than their fair share of time huddled in closets together, smelling of sweat and blood and the tang of excited fear. Anything, anyone, could be on the other side of the closet door in moments like this—an extraction team, an enemy, Clint’s father, a devastated Captain America. And when the shakes started up in earnest it wasn’t only Clint’s nervous system screaming off the stress of shooting, but also the high from feeling alive after months of numbness.

“How could you let Steve do that to you?” Natasha’s grip loosened a bit from his shirt, but her voice was still shaking with rage. “Why didn’t you call for somebody? You had a weapon; why didn’t you shoot him in the fucking _face_?”

“He needed it.” Clint raised a hand and found her unerringly in the darkness, drumming his fingers over her collarbone in a staccato Morse Code.  S H H H H  “And I didn’t mind.”

“Well, _I_ mind!”

“Steve’s afraid.” He said it without thinking, but realized immediately that it was true. “He’s running out of ways to fight for us.”

The Avengers weren’t going to make it; the foundations the team was built on had always been too fragile. They had endured Tony’s disappearance and limped along after his funeral, but they hadn't survived his repeated rebirth and death, pieces of the team crumbling away each time. Clint might be the sick one, might be the one that fell apart first, but the others were never going to be far behind.

Someone knocked quietly on the door but neither of them moved to answer, bodies only relaxing with the eventual sound of retreating footsteps.

“It’s over,” Natasha said finally, anger replaced by quiet resignation. “This place has gone sour for us. SHIELD, too. You and I can leave tonight—go anywhere else, be different people.”

She could always leave everything behind on a whim, cutting her losses and picking up a new role effortlessly while Clint never knew how to let go, clinging to whatever he’d won with clawed fingers. Even now he wanted to hold onto this life, as twisted and stunted and ruined as it had become, and her words brought his inexplicable high crashing down. In its place came the familiar chemistry of creeping dread and exhaustion, settling into his bones and taking all the color out of the world, pulling him back _down down down down_.

 “But we can go even more places if we do it the right way," she went on. "Resign formally from SHIELD, say goodbye to Steve and Bruce. Even to Thor, somehow. Then we could be _us_. You and me, just somewhere else.”

It sounded great, sounded perfect, and he could imagine it suddenly—not needing to come up with a cover story or career, just being Clint Barton, a retired Avenger living out the rest of his life in some anonymous suburban town. He could teach kids how to use a bow, might even feel like shooting his own again, just for fun for the first time in his life, no human target at the other end of the arrow’s path. A life lived out in the open with his own name pinned to an unmoving address, no need for go-bags or escape plans or looking over his shoulder.

“Okay.”

“We’ll take care of each other and you will be well again.”  Natasha wasn’t even listening, caught up in her own steely fantasy, as if she could bend reality through determination alone. “We won’t have to worry about the thing with Tony, or what happens to the team or SHIELD. We could just worry about each other, and things will be good for us again.”

Clint sighed; things had never been _good_ for them, not even when Phil was alive, but she was almost certainly imagining the early days, the two of them healthy and vital and strong. They’d fed unapologetically on one another then, delighted in the chaotic whirlwind of their lives, pushing the other to dangerous heights. Phil Coulson and Nick Fury had kept them grounded in those days, but Phil was long gone and now she was proposing a split from Fury as well. 

“ _Okay_.” Clint squeezed her shoulder and this time she heard him, and he could feel her relief as she leaned into him, her forehead pressed against his cheek.

 “We’ll tell everyone tomorrow, then pack our things.” Natasha’s words vibrated against Clint’s throat, and he nodded back.

Tomorrow. One more night before this part of their lives came to an end.

Long enough for Clint to go to SHIELD one last time and find Iron Man's body.

 

*

“Who else was there?”

It’s understandable that Tony is fascinated with the details of his funeral, wanting to know everything from the musical selections to every attendee. Clint doesn’t especially care to relive it, gritting his teeth as Tony pushes and pushes and pushes.

 “The president,” Clint tells him, and Tony hums appreciatively.

Steve had been angry when the man appeared with great fanfare, the Secret Service and the extra press adding stress to a day that was awful enough. Of course, Steve and Natasha were angry about _everything_ in those days, in perfect counterpoint to Clint and Bruce’s numb shock.

“Figures. That douche was always trying to horn in on my glory.” But Tony sounds pleased all the same, smiling in the moonlight. “Was his wife there? Or the vice president?”

“Nah, just him. But that one actor came.” Clint frowns, reaching for the name but knowing it’s hopeless; he frequently walked out of a movie never having caught the main character’s name, much less the name of the actor that played him. “You know, the guy from the submarine movie that everyone liked so much? There were Russians and a nuclear bomb and—” He gestures vaguely, but Tony just gives him an irritated, baffled shrug. “He has brown hair, is married to that actress with the huge…?” Clint gestures again, this time at his own chest.

“Oh, _that_ narrows it down,” Tony mutters darkly before laughing a little.

He’s usually pretty pissy when they have to sleep in the truck, but tonight he seems fine with it, probably glad enough to avoid the handcuffs. There’s no way Tony could open the truck door without Clint waking, but the inventor is too impulsive to trust unrestrained overnight in a motel room, where there are too many goodies for him to get his hands on. The cab of the truck is cramped and uncomfortable, but aside from the chirping on crickets the world is quiet, only the occasional dark shape fluttering across a sky of stars.

“Who else was there?”

“That reporter from Vanity Fair.” Clint can’t remember her name either. “The blond one that hates you. She even _cried_ ,” he adds on a whim, thinking Tony will like that.

He does. “Yeah? Well. Well well _well._ ” Tony preens a little, smiling, then nudges Clint carefully in the ribs.  “How about _you_ , did you cry at my funeral?” he asks, his tone taking on a more mischievous edge. “You better have. What about Steve and Bruce? Oh my God, what about _Natasha_?”

“Oh, we _all_ did. In buckets.”

It’s another lie, just a small one among the thousands of his lifetime. None of them had cried, Clint feeling nothing at the funeral but a numb, creeping wave of unreality as he stood beside Natasha in his one good suit. He stared at Fury’s broad back in front of him, watched the sun through stained glass windows, counted hats on the heads of female mourners—looked anywhere but at the coffin, Tony’s profile just visible over the side. Clint held Natasha’s hand and didn’t look at her either, not wanting to see her looking worn and solemn and uncharacteristically fragile. The line moved slowly and Clint held out the irrational hope that it would stop moving altogether, that they would never reach the front of the room, but he still shuffled forward when everyone else did, his chest tightening painfully as they grew closer, and so did Natasha’s grip before she moved her hand to his elbow and leaned in close to whisper—

“Good.” Tony’s glee startles Clint out of his reverie and into a grin. “It’s nice to know that I was missed. For awhile, at least.” He shrugs as though it doesn’t matter, but the silence draws out just a few beats too long.  “What about Pepper? How was she?” 

“She looked strong that day. Really strong.” And so she had, standing next to Rhodey and greeting the mourners, alternately hugging and shaking hands, murmuring _Thank you for coming_.

“Mmm.”

Tony turns carefully to stare out the window, and there's not enough light for his face to be reflected back, for Clint to see if that information hurts or pleases him.  Maybe he wanted to hear that Pepper sobbed like that reporter, that she rent her clothes to tatters, that she fainted. What she _had_ done was somehow worse, an impulsive, grieving gesture that Clint only fully realized when he and Natasha finally reached the coffin to pay their respects. Tony’s hands, always so clever and constantly moving, were waxy and still and folded over the pale braid peeking out from underneath, a little piece of Pepper Potts to be laid to rest alongside the man she loved.

“She cut all her hair off,” Clint adds suddenly, startling them both. “Not right then, of course. _Before_. Like maybe the day before?” He stumbles over the words, and Tony sighs. “And probably a hairdresser cut it. Not Pepper.”

Tony reaches a hand back blindly to land on Clint's arm, squeezing carefully to silence the cascading awkwardness, never turning away from the window. “I wish she hadn’t done that. Her hair was always so beautiful.”


	3. Chapter 3

*

The little girl sits in the seat of her mother's shopping cart, chubby legs kicking back and forth, bored as her mother picks up apple after apple, examining and then returning them to the bin. Clint's eyes pass over the child and he wouldn't give her a second thought, except for the glum expression on her little face.

Clint grabs a few nectarines and tosses them lightly into an exaggerated juggle as the little girl watches, clutching a doll to her chest with a glum possessiveness. He’s lost every other good part of himself but maybe there's still something left, a bit of the old magic from the circus, and it's important suddenly that he can still make someone smile. Clint lets one nectarine roll down the length of his arm before popping it back with a practiced flick of his fingers, sending it high over his shoulder for a showy catch behind his back.

He catches all five nectarines in the crook of one elbow the same moment the mother finally stops examining apples and turns absently back toward the shopping cart, never giving him so much as a glance, unaware of the entire interlude. Clint tips the little girl a wink and gets the ghost of a smile back as mother and child move silently away.

His own smile falls away as he considers the fruit in front of him. Tony had liked the oranges from the week before and would probably enjoy a break from the steady diet of water and peanut butter sandwiches. Clint has noticed him looking a little wan lately, uncharacteristically quiet, and some extra vitamins might perk Tony right up again. Clint frowns at the wide selection of apple colors before just grabbing the ones that are nearest, dropping them on top of the loaf of bread in the basket and not caring.

The aisles are long and the layout confusing and Clint has to circuit an irritating number of times before he finds the other things they need—deodorant, acetaminophen, the black marker that Tony insists he needs and made Clint promise three times not to forget.  Clint keeps his head down in the store and feigns the perfect mixture of bored civility that will make him unmemorable to the harried teenaged cashier.

Everything has gone to plan and he’s on his way out of the supermarket and back to the car when his own face catches Clint's eye.

The picture on the poster both is and isn’t him.They must’ve gotten this shot from JARVIS’ surveillance, and it’s the same gray eyes and slightly downturned mouth as always, but he looks miserable and sick. He's studiously avoided mirrors for a few months now but he's fairly sure he doesn't look like  _that_. He’s identified as Andrew John Woodhouse, one of his old SHIELD identities, but the name they’ve used is irrelevant. It’s the picture that draws the eye, and the words. Those words hurt, hurt in a way Clint didn't even know he could be hurt anymore.

_Endangered missing_

_in the company of dangerous individual_

_mentally ill_

_in need of medication_

 

**

Clint’s first birthday at SHIELD a pretty passable fake birth certificate came in the mail, falling out of the envelope alongside a card— _In case you ever need to start over. I’m sorry, Baby Brother._

There never was another note, but the envelopes came every year, and as Barney’s skill grew he also threw in driver’s licenses, social security cards, credit cards, and once, very memorably, a college diploma and transcript. He always used Clint’s SHIELD identification card photo—which he should never have had access to in a million years—for the driver’s licenses, almost certainly to needle his younger brother a bit, doing so just to prove that he could. It should have made Clint angry, but instead he found it strangely reassuring, imagining that Barney had finally grown into the brother he’d always wished for, looking out for Clint, helping in the only way that he could.

 The first birthday that Clint spent with the team a purple envelope arrived at the Tower, addressed to _Hawkeye the Avenger_ in Barney’s uneven handwriting.  Clint squirreled its contents away with the others, his personal insurance for when things went sour, crafted painstakingly and fortified by his brother’s work—more than twenty lifetimes’ worth of ‘starting over’.

And looking back Clint wonders if a part of him always knew how it was all going to go down, if that’s why he packed a bag that day, if that’s why he tucked stacks of Barney’s cards into his pockets like stones, doing it all with a sense of peaceful inevitability. He would _know_ afterward. He would know if he was right, if it was SHIELD behind Tony’s disappearance and the maybe-clones, would know if the real Tony was dead or alive and locked away somewhere. And if Clint found nothing he’d know something else; that he actually _was_ as ill as they all tried to insist, that years of loss and chaos had finally broken him. If Tony’s body wasn’t at SHIELD then Clint would have to believe the others were right.

He _hoped_ they were right.

He hoped for it in the same way he wanted to pretend it was Coulson’s voice screaming through his head, a voice of reason, an angel on his shoulder, a friend in his ear, telling him not to do this. But it was only his own voice, the last bit of Clint Barton that clung to sense and logic and wanted so much for things to be alright again.

 _Tell Steve,_ that part of him insisted. _Listen to him apologize and then let him try to fix everything. Watch him make phone calls and have meetings and make plans._

The keys weren't hidden whatsoever, hanging in plain sight with all his other keys, where Natasha would never think to look. They went to the truck he'd bought a month before—an impulse buy, he told himself, and he hadn’t shown it to anyone only because the thing was so shitty; there were holes in the upholstery and the dashboard display broken in such a way that he had to count the clicks when shifting from park to drive. But every week he moved it from one airport parking lot to another and kept it fueled and ready, because all of this was headed to some inevitable end.

_Call Bruce. Let him tell you stories about ten different friends who all went through something similar and overcame it. Let him speak in meandering metaphors while he invariably pushes for doctors and hospitals and medicine._

Clint showered and combed his hair, brushed his teeth. He shaved carefully—a neat trick when avoiding mirrors. He smoothed wrinkles from his clothes and patted the pockets laden with Barney’s contingency plans. He was ready. No matter what Captain America said, Clint was still an Avenger, he could still plan and prepare and get shit done. He was one hundred percent squared away, by God.

He didn’t bother tucking the gun into his waistband, hiding it in his boot, burying it deep into a pocket. He was Hawkeye and he was going to SHIELD; he was allowed to have a gun if he wanted.

_Call Natasha. Let her tell you what to do, let her pull you up and drag you along, let her push and pinch and nudge you back into proper proportions._

He couldn’t call Natasha. She was probably packing at that very moment, dreaming about their new life, relieved to get her friend back, excited about starting over. Clint couldn’t ruin that good feeling for her, not yet, he’d let her have it a while longer. Natasha was the last person he would _ever_ call, mostly because she was also the only one who could actually stop him.

_Don’t do this. Ask for help. Ask any one of them for help and you’ll get it._

Clint didn’t want help. He wanted to _know._

 

_**_

He took the bus to his ramshackle truck, took the truck to SHIELD. He walked through the hallways just as he always used to, nodded with polite disinterest to the few people he saw. No one stopped him. He was Agent Clint Barton and he belonged everywhere.  

He took the elevator to Research and Development and walked past all the labs and through a warren of offices. He picked his way carefully through what appeared to be two supply closets not on any floorplans before he came to a white room and a person at a desk. That person presented the first look of surprise and asked for a clearance code with a confused smile of welcome.

Clint shot that person.

 

*

It’s a foolish impulse and he knows it, just as he knows that these posters were created for him to see. That every word was carefully chosen, meant to provoke and hurt and agitate him into doing exactly this. Clint doesn’t need to unwrinkle the poster shoved into his pocket to recall the phone number; he knows it by heart and she answers on the first ring.

“Clint?” She sounds hopeful and suspicious at the same time, and the familiarity of her voice hurts almost as much seeing those words.

He only has a few minutes to talk to her before the team or SHIELD can scramble a proper response, but Clint says nothing, watching people file in and out of the supermarket, precious seconds slipping away.

“…Tony?” she tries, her voice more quiet, flat.

Clint's short, incredulous laugh is answer enough and immediately Natasha sounds like herself again. “Are you alright?” She doesn’t even give him a chance to respond before adding, “This is fixable. You hear me? All of it. Tell me where you are and I will _help_ you fix it.”

It shouldn't be so tempting. It’d be easier than breathing, to name the town, the rundown motel, and then just...wait. Sit and wait and let her swoop in and take care of everything.

 “I saw your sign.” His voice sounds pained and uncertain when he wants it to sound angry, accusing. “That wasn’t very nice, Natasha.”

“I’m not sorry.” She and Nick Fury and probably the entirety of SHIELD could have that engraved on their tombstones someday— _I did what I had to. It was for the best. I’m not sorry._ And why should she be, when the gambit had worked perfectly? Wasn’t he reacting exactly as she wanted, giving the team their best lead in weeks? “Tell me where you are.”

 “After what happened in Joplin?” It’s both crystal clear and a blur in his memory now, Tony holding his hands up and crying _wait wait wait_ while Steve shouted _Just grab him_ and Natasha kept her eyes on Clint and her gun trained at Tony’s chest. As if simply removing him from the equation would put everything back to rights, making Tony dead again the way he was supposed to be.  “You tried to kill us.”

 She makes an unhappy, very un-Natashalike sound. “We absolutely did _not_ try to kill you.”

“You shot at us.”

 “Clint.”  It’s her serious voice, her _listen to me if you want to live_ voice, the one he’s heard a hundred times in a hundred different terrible situations. He can picture her perfectly, standing with her teeth gritted and her hand over her eyes. “Clint, I _promise_ you that nobody shot at you. We weren’t even armed that day. Please.”

 “You’re a liar.” Natasha hates being called that more than anything. Clint remembers the words _in need of medication_ and his face ugly and distorted on the poster and amends, “A _fucking_ liar.”

There’s a scuffling noise on her end of the line, and she’s crafty as hell, but he hears the muffled _thump_ of a drawer closing and knows she’s getting dressed. Quietly, carefully, not wanting to alert and rattle the crazy person on the other end of the line. Clint closes his eyes, imagining that faint tinkling he hears is the sound of a set of car keys being shoved into a pocket, that the slide of metal on wood is the sound of Natasha pulling her gun from its place in the closet.

“Going somewhere, Nat?”

“Of course I am.” She doesn’t bother playing it quiet now that she’s been called out, and Clint hears a door open and close. Someone murmuring and the whispering answer of a voice that belongs unmistakably to Bruce.  “You _know_ there’s no way we’re not coming to get you.”

“And _you_ know I’d never call if there were any way for you to do that.”

“Then tell me where you are. I’ll come alone and we’ll talk." She must move away from the others then, because everything has gone silent. "Okay? Just us. Just you and me.”

“But _I’m_ not alone, remember?”

It’s her turn to fall quiet. “I want to tell you something. About Tony." Natasha hesitates again, sounding unsure for the first time. "The _real_ Tony. And it’s going to be hard to hear, but—”

Clint slams the payphone down, the loud _clunk_ of the receiver and startled _ding_ of the bell making the whole thing far more satisfying than any cellphone hang-up could ever be. It doesn’t matter what Natasha has to say about Tony; it’s all just a way to stall and hold Clint in place, and she's already proven that there's nothing she won't say or do.

 

*

Clint has to hurry then, because he played right into their hand and now they’re coming.

And it takes ten minutes of escalating panic before he remembers that he'd swapped the truck for a car two days before, and five minutes after  _that_ to find it in the parking lot, his hands shaking so furiously that he can barely unlock the door.

And it takes him even longer to remember to pull over and untie Tony and drag him out of the trunk.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone pointed out that I hadn't updated this story in two months.  
> I thought, "That surely can't be true", but it WAS.  
> I was aghast. I was floored. I was guilty of egregious fic neglect. That is not okay. That is a Very Bad Thing Indeed ™, and I hope I will be forgiven. I was having a hard time with the last section of this chapter, which I solved by taking that section out completely.

*

It’s their final week together, but neither of them know it yet.

 

*                                                                                                                                                 

“Head for the mountains, it’s cold and it’s clear,” Tony sings, then leans in obnoxiously toward Clint to belt out the rest. “Head for the mountains of Busch…” He moves in even closer, eyebrows raised and eyes comically wide “…Beer!

Tony’s a little livelier today than usual, probably just excited that they have a destination for once instead of driving aimlessly. That their destination is not just _north_ or _west_ or the less defined, more nebulous _away_. Clint flexes the fingers holding the steering wheel too tightly, glaring at the highway sign on the horizon, willing it to come into clear view faster. He’s gotten spoiled living in the era of cellphones and GPS, not able to remember the names of highways as easily as he once had. Tony is supposed to be navigating but is doing a rather shitty job, being more preoccupied with singing than watching the map.

“Can’t get enough Super Golden Crisp!”  Tony sits back upright and extends both pointer fingers to make a shooting gesture at the freight truck barreling past them. _Pow pow pow_. “It’s got the crunch with punch!”

Clint ignores him, focusing on the conversation that’s been running through his head for the last hour, the potential interaction between himself and his long-lost good-for-nothing brother. He needs to figure it out in advance, because there’s a way to do things just right; observing basic polite niceties before appealing to what he remembers of Barney’s better nature. Reminisce about some of the few good days at the circus perhaps, maybe tell a couple funny Avenger stories while avoiding all mention of Natasha, whom Barney can't stand. Sit down on a couch and take proffered drinks, be courteously bullied into sharing a meal. And then, after all that and an acceptable passage of time, nonchalantly request some new identification papers for Tony. And then ask for some money; they need more money. Clint hasn’t seen or spoken to his brother in years and he has to do it all right, can’t just open the visit with demands for favors.

 _How have you been?_ A traditional opening. A classic.  Clint imagines himself reaching out for a handshake, maybe the kind that turns into clapping Barney’s back with his free hand before finally morphing into the standard one-armed man hug.

 _Long time no see_ sounds good, too. Nice and casual. _We were in the area and I thought I’d look you up._

“I am stuck on Band-aid brand, cause Band Aid’s stuck on me!” Tony sings before pulling the bandage off his wrist, still raw and oozing from his struggle with the handcuffs, and tossing it out of the window. “Oops! Well, it's not stuck anymore."

“Litterbug,” Clint says automatically, absently, still focused on the merits of _Hey, how’s it going_ and the believability of _I missed you, Big Brother._

Tony just laughs, pulling the bandage from his other wrist and throwing it also. Being deliberately obnoxious is a classic Tony Stark maneuver, and this thing in the passenger seat pulls it off admirably, so like the real thing.

He never asks. He won’t. He probably knows the answer and doesn’t want to hear it said aloud, because that will make it more true.  He’s obviously picked up on Clint’s doubts and tries to disprove them in every subtle and unsubtle way he knows how, but he's never asked the question outright, instead weaving it throughout every in-joke, layering it inside every casual bit of recollection.

_You believe me, right?_

And now it’s here, too, behind the recitation of all these television jingles from a remembered childhood— _Say that you believe it’s really me. That I’m the real Tony Stark._

Not that Clint has any inclination to allay his fears, nor the time or energy to spare. Not with the Avengers suddenly breathing down their necks.

The highway sign is finally close enough to read— _Staunton 35 miles_. Barney's driveway is a gravel road two miles past Staunton. Or maybe three. Either way, there’s a limited amount of time left to get this just right, to decide on the perfectly innocuous yet inviting opening line.

 “How have you been?” Clint whispers, flexing his fingers again, ignoring Tony’s loud sigh. Apparently it's fine for geniuses like him and Bruce to talk to themselves, but anyone else doing so just sounds crazy. “Hey Barney, long time no see. How’ve you been?” It sounds stupid instead of casual, and Clint swears under his breath. He used to be so good at this, used to know how to say just the right thing, how to make anyone believe anything he wanted.

“Lucky Charms,” Tony sings, also eyeing the highway sign as they fly past. “Magically delicious.”

 

*

“Shit,” Barney says as they emerge from the car. He pulls Clint in for a too-tight hug, then pushes him out to arm’s length, looks him up and down and mutters “ _Jesus_ ” before immediately pulling him back in again.

It’s been more than ten years but Barney looks the same. Red hair, so like their mother’s, face resting into a natural scowl, as their father’s had, as Clint’s own face does. The shuttered, suspicious expression at the sight of an unexpected vehicle pulling into his driveway evaporated into almost comical disbelief when he recognized his brother.

 “We need money,” Clint blurts without meaning to, clutching Barney back and hating himself for it. All his rehearsal and careful planning undone in an instant. He’s been out of the car for a grand total of thirty seconds and is already asking for money in classic Barton fashion—thirty years and hundreds of miles from the old homeplace and he’s _still_ managed to turn into his father.

But Barney just says “Okay” and keeps holding on and for once Clint’s misstep doesn’t matter, and just for a moment everything just feels warm and safe and good.

 

*

“So you quit SHIELD?”

 “What? Yeah.”

Sure. Why not? Clint hadn’t submitted any forms or talked to HR, but leaving those Research techs tied and piled in a closet was probably resignation enough. They were screaming and crying when Clint shut the door; they were probably found quickly. They probably all lived in spite of their injuries. SHIELD had welcomed him back once, after what happened with Loki, but they won’t forgive a second time, especially not this. Not even Nick Fury—not for old time’s sake, not if it’s what Phil Coulson would have wanted, and certainly not for Clint himself. It won't matter that Clint had been a perfect agent for twenty years, won't matter that he had done every terrible thing the man had ever asked of him.

 “Good. I never liked you there. With those people.” Barney opens a book seemingly at random and pulls out two twenty dollar bills.

Tony travels opposite of Barney in a slow circuit of the room, curious about everything, constantly picking things up and putting them back down again, obviously enjoying being somewhere other than cars and motel rooms. Clint watches him uneasily from the couch, one hand clutching the glass of iced tea that Barney had thrust at him, the other drumming his fingers on his knees or tracing the patterns on the couch. God knows what Tony’s already found and squirreled away into his pockets; Clint will have to search him later.

“You guys are staying for lunch, right?” Barney pulls more books off a shelf, stacking them in the crook of his arm. “I can order us a pizza. There’s a place down the road that delivers; they’re pretty good.”

“No,” Clint says immediately. It’s too easy to imagine his brother smiling and rattling off a fake order while SHIELD listens in over a tapped line, while Captain America tells Barney that the Avengers are coming, just to stall a bit, just to hold tight and wait.

Barney looks a little taken aback by the vehemence but recovers smoothly, shrugging it off and handing Clint his collected stack of twenties. “Okay, then. No big deal. It’s…whatever.” He shrugs again, grins. “Right?”

He’s different, he’s changed. Maybe it’s because Barney is older and has mellowed out some, or maybe he’s just so happy to see Clint that he’s unwilling to pick a fight. But either way that mild tone rings foreign and strange and Clint would much rather that Barney sounded offended, that he be as prickly and short-tempered the way Clint remembers. Instead, this older, measured Barney reminds Clint painfully of Fury’s frowning _I’m worried about you son_ lectures, the SHIELD shrink’s reassurances that _We’re all on the same side here._ It’s Barney’s face but somehow it’s Bruce’s nervous _I just want to help_ expression that Clint sees, Barney’s voice but with Steve’s overly kind _let’s humor our poor sick friend_ lilt to all the words.

Tony chuckles quietly at the rotary phone on a desk, tapping at the typewritten number on the dial. The old Tony would have clutched his chest dramatically and declared such old technology an affront to God; this one just laughs indulgently. He’s wrong, too, as wrong as Barney, neither one of them acting the way he remembers them, the way they’re supposed to.

 Clint scrubs a hand along his face and drains the last of the iced tea in one gulp, shoves the sweating glass onto the coffee table, where it will undoubtedly leave a ring behind. Fuck it.

“Or I could cook,” Barney offers instead, stacking the books haphazardly and shoving them back onto the shelf. “You still like Rice-a-Roni? I used to make that all the time when we were kids, you remember? Half for me and half for you.” When Clint just stares back Barney's grin goes a little uncertain around the edges.

“Is that right?” Tony interjects, surprising both Bartons, as if they’d almost forgotten he was there. "Rice-a-Roni, huh? The San Francisco Treat?"

“Yeah, Clint _loved_ himself some Rice-a-Roni. And macaroni with hotdogs. I made that all the time, too. Cheap stuff.” Barney shakes his head a little, shrugging off the memory. “Well, it tastes good when you don’t know any fucking better, I guess.”

He reaches for a high shelf and for a moment Clint is sure when his hand comes down again it’ll be holding a gun, that easy, nostalgic grin fading suddenly into something regretful, some variation of _I’m so sorry_ or _It’s nothing personal_ on his lips. Clint’s so convinced that he actually sees it for a minute, the flash of metal and the dull black of a pistol grip. His own fingers twitch toward the gun tucked into his waistband as adrenaline pours gamely into his system, but all of it is for nothing when Barney hand reappears just holding yet another book with yet another stack of cash inside.

Tony is watching them both uneasily, paused in front of a framed article about the Avengers, half of the team is smiling in the picture, the other half scowling.

“We aren’t staying for lunch.” Clint takes the bills that Barney holds out and shoves them messily into his jeans pocket. There’s a crawling feeling under his skin, all of the instincts that have kept him alive thus far are screaming that this house is wrong, that _Barney_ is wrong, that he’s hiding something, that it’s dangerous for Clint and Tony to linger here. “We actually need to leave pretty soon.”

“You just got here,” Barney protests, eyeing the clock. Maybe he’s just noting the time. Or maybe his gaze stays there a moment too long, calculating. Estimating how long it’ll take someone to arrive, how long he needs to delay them. “Come on, I haven’t seen you in years. Stay for lunch. Hang out for a while.”

“No.” The couch feels suddenly made of spikes and Clint can’t get off it fast enough, and both Tony and Barney’s eyes are on his clenched fists. “I need papers,” he snaps, and was supposed to do it right, had _practiced_ doing it right, making harmless small talk and shooting the shit before working his way up to asking favors. Instead he’s being too aggressive, too demanding, but none of it matters anymore because they came all this way and Barney is different, Barney’s not right. “Like you made for me, but for him.” He juts his chin toward Tony, almost in accusation.  

 _You don’t order me around_ , the old Barney would have growled. _I’m not your goddamned servant._ Maybe he’d even throw in the classic maneuver of shoving Clint to the ground and looming over him, his shoulders hunched, his head down. Barney had always been bigger. Even when Clint had grown up and they were the same height, Barney still somehow seemed bigger.

 But this new Barney just says “Okay, sure, I can do that” and smiles too widely. Soothing. Conciliating. Pacifying. “I’ll go grab my stuff, alright?”

It’s not alright, everything is a hundred times worse the moment Barney leaves, sighing to himself in the kitchen and rattling drawers, being loud. _Too_ loud, perhaps, using the clatter of objects to mask what he’s really doing in there. He’s being distracting and Tony’s still drifting around the living room touching everything and Clint can’t keep track of them both.

Maybe there’s another phone in the kitchen. Not a rotary phone this time, but a sleek, modern cellphone that won't make a sound while Barney taps in the phone number. He won't even have to say anything, because maybe Natasha's gotten to him already and asked for help, now just waiting for his name to appear. Those two hate each other, but Barney would sell Clint out if offered enough cash—he’s always wanted more, he's never had enough.

“Clint.” Tony’s suddenly right in front of him, crouched down on his heels. “Calm down.”

Or maybe Barney saw on one of those signs, the posters with Clint’s face and a phone number on the bottom. _Endangered missing. Mentally ill. In need of medication._ Those words still hurt. He's still bleeding from them, bleeding to death.

“Where _is_ it?” Barney’s muttering to himself in the other room and Tony puts hand over Clint’s and says “Everything's fine.”

Clint looks down at that hand, at the raw skin of Tony’s wrists, purple and black and red and thinks of the woman from a few weeks ago, the one who recognized Tony, thinks about how she'd looked after Clint made sure that she wouldn’t talk. Thinks about the people in Research and Development and how they’d been afraid when they saw Clint coming, when they realized that he knew about Tony. Barney Barton has been a bad brother, a cheat and a thief, but he'd also sent identities and credit cards faithfully for twenty years and then offered all the cash he had when Clint came begging, and no matter what he’s doing in that kitchen right now, Clint doesn’t want Barney to look scared the way those people had. 

Clint makes a pained sound in the back of his throat and grabs at the nearest red wrist, his fingers circling and biting into the raw flesh. Tony doesn’t even wince, just nods quickly when Clint growls “We’re leaving” as if he’d been waiting for this moment the entire visit.

“I found my—” Barney reappears with a camera and a confused smile, and turns on his heel to follow them to the front door, all of them reaching it at the same time. “You’re not leaving already, are you?”

“I’m afraid so.” It’s Tony that answers this time, and in that moment he sounds exactly like the old Tony, the charm he used to toss to reporters and fans more convincing than singing a hundred commercial jingles could ever be. “I’m sorry that we couldn’t have had that Rice-a-Roni, though; I’m sure it would’ve just been excellent.”

“But—” Barney trails them to the car, flustered. “What about those IDs? Just give me a few hours and I can have them ready."

“We’ll call you.” Tony shoves Clint behind the wheel, even going so far as to start the car and buckle his seatbelt before slamming the driver's door, pushing past Barney on his way to the other side of the car.

Barney says something, the sound muted by the glass, his mouth moving and hands waving exaggeratedly, his face confused and upset until Clint has no choice but to roll the window down. “What?”

 “Listen, I don’t want you to go." Barney leans into the open window, his hands gripping the edge, looking desperate. " _Clint_. I’m worried about you.” This time it’s definitely a stalling tactic, trying to hold them there just a little bit longer.

“Don’t be.” Clint pulls the seatbelt away from his neck while Tony flips on the air conditioning and gives him a pointed look.

“Well, can I just talk to you for a minute then? Alone?” 

“Next time,” Clint lies and Barney barely has time to move his hands away and jump backward as the car roars to life.

Tony watches him in the rearview mirror, but Clint keeps his eyes on the road, doesn’t want to know if Barney is using that camera to capture their license plate. If he has a cellphone in his hand. He doesn’t want to see his brother’s face, doesn't want to know if he looks conniving or disappointed or sad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter was originally a continuation of this one--the Avengers finally catch up to Clint and Tony, though it's not quite the endgame yet.  
> (See what I did there? I am so HIP and RELEVANT)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is my birthday, so I wrote you a story!

*

It was sometime after Fury had hidden Clint away on desk detail but before sitting in the closet with Natasha—beyond that Clint isn’t sure when it happened; the timeline went vague and watery after a point. It wouldn’t sharpen again until he found Tony and weaned himself from the bitter combination of prescription drugs and teammates’ weary hopes.

They’d passed around a small bottle of pills, hand to hand to hand, Bruce squinting at the bottle an arm’s length away, having forgotten his reading glasses yet again. No concerns over privacy; Clint’s problems had become everyone’s business, fixing him the new team mission.  He usually sat off to the side, a token attendee at these informal meetings, the subject of many conversations but rarely a contributor.

“These are gonna help?” It was somehow both a question and a declaration, Steve willing the new medicine to work; he still had faith in doctors back then.

“They should.” Bruce did a weird shrugging, headbobbing movement that allowed the _They certainly can’t hurt anyway_ to remain unspoken. His tone changed as he turned toward Clint, artificially brighter and upbeat. “One tablet twice a day.” Reading the label aloud, as though Clint had somehow lost the ability. “So, right when you wake up, huh? And then twelve hours after that, okay?” He looked expectant, so Clint nodded. “What time do you usually get up?”

It didn’t matter when he got up anymore. Five days a week JARVIS prompted him from bed to be driven to his SHIELD office by a grim-faced Natasha, but on weekends Clint went no further than the living room couch. He watched a lot of infomercials, fascinated by the actors who promised that their product would solve every problem and create unlimited happiness. They looked insane—their voices were loud and overly inflected, frequently punctuated by desperate laughter, as if everyone was performing at gunpoint.

Bruce and Steve and Natasha were all staring at him now, and Clint cleared his throat, trying to remember the question. “Uh. Seven o’clock?” he guessed.

“Okay. Then seven a.m. and seven p.m, right? That’s easy to remember, isn’t it?” Bruce ended almost every statement with a question, as if doing so could somehow force Clint into being more of a participant.  “And JARVIS can help you, right?”

JARVIS was their spy. Clint had no illusions of privacy in the Tower; JARVIS was watching constantly, cataloging every hour Clint slept and every bit of food he did or did not eat, ready to fire off a warning to the others for the most minor of concerns. _Agent Barton has not showered in three days. Agent Barton threw up this morning._ Sometimes Clint wondered if the artificial intelligence was self aware enough to be offended by his new role; he had been created to assist one of the most brilliant minds on earth and then relegated to a glorified nanny cam.

“And _these_ —” Bruce shook the second bottle, smiling, looking so much like one of those infomercial hosts— _For only three payments of $29.99 you can enjoy unparalleled peace of mind!_ “—are PRN. See?  That means sometimes. That means once in a while. You know? So if you’re having an especially bad day, feeling more anxious than usual, you can take one.” Bruce smiled again, pushed the bottle into Clint’s hands. “Right?”

“Right.” 

He thought of Phil Coulson suddenly, who’d sort of been the JARVIS of ‘before’, watching over Clint and Natasha unobtrusively but unfailingly. When things went wrong and ended with sprains and breaks and stitches Phil would appear in Clint’s quarters in perfect four hour intervals and hand him bottles of pills in just the same way. Clint would have rather suffered than take pain medicine, but Phil wouldn’t allow it, insistent and caring in an I-accept-none-of-your-bullshit way that no one else would ever be able to replicate. _It’s just for little while,_ Phil would say, making it sound alright, making the medicine seem like a choice when it really wasn’t, _while the pain is really bad._ _It’s just until the worst of it passes._

No one said anything like that now. There was no sundown, no end date, everyone had stopped referring to it as a passing thing. 

 

*

Clint would give anything for one of those pills now, imagines knocking back a handful. A bottleful. Lying down on the bed and waiting for them to work, trembling like a fish on dry land, like a stutter caught in a panicked throat.

“It’s just for a little while,” he says, using Phil’s words, avoiding Tony’s baleful eyes. _It’s just until the worst of it passes._ “I promise that I won’t be gone long.”

Clint thought he’d feel better with every mile and hour they put between themselves and Barney’s house, but instead it was the opposite, and he really should have tried to explain it reasonably and calmly, the same way he had once tried, and failed, to lay out his theory of Tony’s abduction to the team. He should have tried to explain how they needed a new car because Barney had seen the old one, because he might have seen that poster with the phone number, how Barney loved money more than he loved Clint, how now they weren’t safe. Tony would have understood, might have even offered to help Clint find something new. Maybe it could have even been sort of fun; the two of them had always had a good time together in the old days, were thick as thieves once upon a time.

But in the end he didn’t ask Tony and he didn’t give any warning, because it _never_ goes that way. Tony always argues, lodges a protest, puts up a fight, makes things harder than they need to be.

Clint leaves him in the closet, gagged with his hands cuffed behind him, one to each foot like always. He also places the alarm clock in the closet in an impulsive gesture of conciliation, the cord just long enough to reach from the outlet. Perhaps being able to keep track of the time will help Tony keep things in perspective, to see that it really won’t take so long, that Clint will be back in a matter of hours, that he needn’t have struggled so hard and caused so much fuss.

Tony will forgive him, of course. Later. He always does. He has to.

 He doesn’t have anyone else.

 

*

 _"_ Isn't this one a beaut? A real steal." 

Clint doesn't answer. It is neither a beaut nor a steal.

The salesman, Call-Me-Harry, is already sweating despite the steady fall wind, his polo shirt sticking to his back in wet patches. He’s the kind of man who probably sweats all the time, even in winter, who carries a handkerchief just to mop constantly at his face and neck. He coos over every car they pass, smiling too much, big teeth and receding gums.

 _Very Clean_ , soapy words promise. _Only $5000, WOW_! Clint thinks about how demoralizing it must be to be the person that writes on windows all day, recycling the same cheerful adjectives to describe a litany of shitty cars. If it were him, he’d come up with something a little more clever; he used to sit in perches for hours, days, his eyes on the target and his mind twisting idly, coming up with random, mission-related haikus or limericks to surprise Coulson and Natasha with later, presenting them like a bouquet of flowers. One of Clint's more useless talents, but the words and cadences still come easily.

 

_Look, no money down_

_Low payments, easy finance_

_God I need this sale_

 

Clint imagines Natasha rolling her eyes at his efforts, Coulson listening with his usual bemused grace. _That was a good one_ , he always said drily, even if it wasn’t. He knew how bored Clint could get up there, wouldn’t begrudge him a bit of fun. _Now, if we can get back to the debrief—_

“How about this one? Lots of leg room, and look at that pinstriping!”

Clint hums noncommittally. He’ll know the perfect car when he sees it, without Call-Me-Harry’s intercession. Neutral color. Big trunk. Good engine. No fucking pinstripe.

 

_Please buy this clunker_

_It will help meet my sales goals_

_I’ll get you a deal_

 

The corner of Clint’s mouth lifts before he can stop it, Call-Me-Harry spotting the movement with a predator’s skill and misinterpreting, all but rubbing his hands together in glee.

“How about a test drive?”

“I’m actually looking for something a little more—”

The words die in his mouth. He feels eyes somewhere, on him, eyes crawling over his shoulders and back, over his face. 

Not Call-Me-Harry’s eyes, not the distant eyes of a hopeful car lot manager, not the eyes of another patron skimming over him with lazy disinterest.

Eyes looking _at_ him, eyes looking _for_ him.

*

Clint turns on his heel and stalks in the other direction, Call-Me-Harry on his heels— _Hey, what’s wrong? Hey where’re you going? Wait, look, how about this Honda?_ —and stopping only when the pavement of the car lot ends, like a dog frustrated by the confines of an invisible fence. He’s still calling to Clint, who pays no attention.

He passes the payday loan shop next door.

A nail salon.

Another payday loan place.

The car is only two blocks away and he can see it, he can fucking _see it_ , when his progress is halted by a woman rooting through her purse outside of a coffee shop, the shopping bags monopolizing the sidewalk. Clint is just about to push around her with an irritated snarl when the light catches her hair.

Natasha.

And there’s Steve across the street, wearing a ballcap and not even pretending to read a newspaper in his hands, staring openly at Clint, eyes calculating how long it would take to cross the distance between them. Bruce is there also, but hasn’t noticed Clint, isn’t paying attention at all, lingering in the doorway of the coffee shop, visibly impatient and gesturing, arguing with someone inside.

He knew they’d show up eventually. That she would. Clint had called her, he’d fucked up, and it had always been a matter of time.   _Just you and me_ , she said that day, but here they all are, and maybe some others, too, some SHIELD agents waiting nearby, unseen.

Clint puts the car keys in his pocket. He won’t need them now. _I’m sorry, Tony_.

 Natasha turns toward him. Her hands are empty, but that doesn’t mean anything; Clint has seen this routine of hers a dozen times before. She can have a weapon in seconds, pulled from any one of those shopping bags strewn carefully around her feet, holding everything the Black Widow thought she might need, easily transportable as an element of her Just-a-Woman-Shopping persona.

 “I’m not going back to SHIELD,” Clint warns.

 “No. You’re coming home.” It’s an agreement, a promise, and a threat all at the same time. A Natasha Romanov specialty.

Steve has moved closer, halfway into the street, paying no attention to the cars that edge by. A few people lay on their horns as they pass. Someone yells.  

“Be careful,” Natasha tells Steve, and Bruce suddenly looks over and notices the standoff with a surprised _Oh, shit_. Natasha’s eyes stay trained on Clint. “It could be anywhere. Up high maybe. Keep an eye out.”

It.

_It._

Tony.

She means Tony, the Tony she believes is an imposter, the clever fake she flirted with killing back in Missouri, the soulless husk that she calls an _it_. Clint feels a hysterical bubble of laughter threaten to burst from his throat at the image of Tony up on a rooftop somewhere, armed with a sniper rifle and ready to pick them off at Clint’s command. A ridiculous contrast to reality—Tony handcuffed in a closet, staring at the red numbers of a hotel alarm clock, watching the minutes tick by painfully, waiting for Clint to return.

He might be waiting for a very long time.

“ _It_ ,” Clint echoes, and Natasha’s eyes narrow. Steve takes another step forward. “You don’t have to worry about _it. It_ isn’t here. _It_ died. _He_ died. He’s dead.” There’s no way Clint is getting out of this, he’s caught, he’s trapped, he is going to be taken today, but maybe Tony can still make it if the team isn’t looking for him. If he can get himself out of that closet somehow. “Dead, just the way you wanted him to be.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She doesn’t bother trying to sound sincere, her eyes evaluating, skimming over Clint’s body to determine if he’s carrying a weapon—and he is, of _course_ he is—evaluating how fast he can produce it, if they can take him with a minimum of civilian involvement.

“I’m not going back to SHIELD,” he says again, and this time he catches Steve’s movement, almost fully on their side of the street now, paused at the edge of the sidewalk. Steve is strong, but Clint had been quick on his feet once, faster than Captain America. 

“Don't,” Natasha warns. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I was gone. You should’ve let me _stay_ gone.”

“Wait,” Bruce says, holding up his hands, one toward them, one toward the open doorway. “Wait wait wait!”

Part of him wants to see what she’ll do, what she’ll pull out of those bags to stop him, how far she’s willing to go. Another part of it is the same impulsivity that gets him in and out of any number of personal disasters. He moves his hands toward his waistband and then everyone explodes into movement, Steve leaping toward him, Natasha stepping forward and reaching down into her bags in the same smooth movement as another figure comes running from the coffee shop, wild-eyed and hoping to stop the inevitable.

It’s Tony.

But he's _not_ Tony. 

And he also is. 

In the next breath Clint Barton is falling—either by their doing or his own shock, it doesn’t matter. Steve catches him up from behind, easing both of them to the ground in a controlled fall, arms around Clint’s chest and arms, pinning them down, restraining and hugging at the same time.

“It’s okay,” Steve says desperately into his ear as Clint gasps for breath and closes his eyes, not wanting to look, not wanting to see. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is also finished; it just needs to be revised. So maybe...tomorrow? Or even later today, if my family obligations allow. :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I actually fulfilled my promise and finished another chapter. I feel ridiculously proud of myself.  
> This should also mark the end of the Clint Barton flashback scenes, which should please everyone everywhere. :P

That day, which has grown in importance until it deserved to be capitalized, even in his own mind—That Day. That Day Clint Barton went to SHIELD for the last time. That Day he found a room full of Tony Starks, all but one of them dead or dying.

He drove for an hour before pulling into a rest stop. He stood outside of Tony's window—not able to let him out of sight yet, not even for a second, not when he just got him back—and pulled out the phone he took from the last scientist’s pocket. He dialed Natasha's number and ignored the blood under his fingernails.

“Clint, what have you done? What the _fuck_ have you done??”

Natasha was scared, and Clint heard her frightened so rarely that his own heartbeat immediately picked up in Pavlovian devotion. She was his partner. His best friend. They were two halves of the same murderous whole; Ike and Mike, their hearts beating alike.

“I’m sorry.” They were supposed to leave SHIELD tomorrow, supposed to go to Fury and quit together, start new lives the right way, and he's ruined it. “But see, I found him. He _knew_ me.”

“Stop it. Just fucking _stop it!”_ There’s anger, and quite a lot of it, under all that terror. “It’s _not_ him! It’s just one of the things. Fury said they found another just yesterday morning. That’s all it is!”

 “It’s him.” Tony was slumped against the door, staring through the window at the night sky, too weak to sit upright. He didn’t seem to know what was going on, wouldn't speak. Clint pressed his fingers to the window, half expecting Tony to reach back in response, but he didn’t, just looked at Clint’s hand in bleary confusion. “He knew me. He’s alive.”

 “It won’t stay alive. You've seen that yourself. They always die. All of them.”

“Not all.”

 Clint was there when the first Tony-thing died in the lobby of the tower, had closed the staring eyes of the one they found in Tennessee. _Enough_ , Steve said after Wyoming, all of them quiet and empty-eyed on the quinjet, the latest body already in a bag in the back, hidden away. _Let SHIELD pick up any others that come. But we’re done. We’ve had enough._

“SHIELD nursed some of them back to health. Kept them.” He tapped the window with a bloody fingernail and Tony blinked his eyes in groggy surprise. Drugged, probably—Clint could certainly sympathize. “Go down to R&D and see for yourself.”

“I will.” She was running, and on her end of the line a door slammed faintly. Then another.  “I'll come get you and you can show me. We can go together.”

Natasha was agreeing too readily, the anger vanishing as quickly as it had come. Trying to get to Clint before SHIELD could, before he could do anything else stupid. Her words were just the hasty, desperate promises given to people holding a gun to someone’s head, to people standing on ledges, one foot hovering above the tantalizing brink— _I’ll do anything you want, listen to me, don’t do this, it can still be okay, just stop stop stop_.

“Yeah?” His mouth felt numb, like his lips might not even be moving. “What about Tony?”

There wasn’t even the slightest of pauses, the space of a breath. Not a moment of hesitation before she promised, “He can come home, too.”

And that was it, that was the end. Natasha was lying to him, because none of it mattered.

Clint found Tony, alive. He found several other Tonys, not alive. He found pieces in jars, neatly labeled. Piles of meticulously kept autopsy notes, clipboards with measurements and drawings by SHIELD’s best and brightest.

Clint had been right all along, right about everything, and it didn’t fucking matter.

The Avengers would take Clint and Fury would take Tony and make him disappear, claim that he’d died like all those others. Fury would talk his way out of everything, explain it all away and everyone would believe him. The team would drag Clint home and tenderly, lovingly shove pills down his throat and tell him to rest and be quiet. They would tell him that, yes, he had been right but, no, it didn’t make any difference.

Clint hurled the phone at a semi exiting the diesel pumps, landing it perfectly on the top of the trailer, where it would remain until the truck picked up too much speed on the highway. Tony jumped a little at the slam of the car door as Clint climbed back inside, rolling his head sickly in Clint’s direction.

It felt like dying. He couldn’t trust Natasha anymore. His best friend, his other half, with their twinned heartbeats. Maybe her heart was also bleeding, stopping, like his. Maybe she had just killed them both.

Clint sat there a long time, too long, staring out the windshield and trying to make sense of it, trying to reorganize a life where evidence counted for nothing, where the truth could be dismissed as unnecessary, where nothing mattered. And maybe the paralysis would have held them too long, long enough for SHIELD to find them, long enough for JARVIS to trace the phone and send the team running, but a tremulous voice brought Clint back, deciding everything for the both of them.

 “Clint?” Tony’s eyes looked a little clearer. Shaking off the drugs. Waking up. Being alive again. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah.” Clint stared for another moment before starting the car. He’d drive them west, maybe, to start. West sounded good. “It’s me.”

 

*

Now Clint keeps his eyes closed. He doesn’t want to see. He can’t.

“I _told_ you,” Bruce is saying. “I told you to stay inside!”

“But she was going to _shoot_ him.” Tony’s voice.

It’s Tony.

It’s not Tony.

Steve’s _shhh_ is a little too loud to be soothing as Natasha’s hands forage quickly and efficiently through Clint’s pockets. She takes the gun, the knives, the cards from Barney, the cash. She even takes Call-Me-Harry’s goddamned business card. Everything gone in a matter of seconds, almost every way he has to defend himself. Each darting grab is like another cut, added to the wound of seeing Tony, the dread of knowing that it’s all over, all of it, flaying Clint Barton open bit by bit.

He’ll bleed out, bleed to death, there won’t be anything left of him.

“Clint.” When Natasha reaches out to brush the hair from his forehead he snaps back to life, struggling furiously, the top of his head clipping Steve’s chin. The captain’s arms tighten in response. “Clint, look at me.”

" _What_ are you doing to that man?" Another woman’s voice then, loud and brash, the voice of someone used to being in charge, used to being listened to. “I asked you a question!  _What_ are you doing to him? I’m calling the cops!”

Words rumble in Steve’s chest behind Clint’s head, his best Captain America voice. “Everything is fine. He’s ill.” Steve chose that word deliberately, _ill_ means something different than _sick_ , everyone knows that. It communicates something specific, and does so delicately, tactfully. _Yes, our friend is crazy_ , _but please don’t stare; it’s rude._

Bruce drags over one of the coffee shop’s metal chairs and Steve lifts Clint from the ground, eases him down into it carefully. Like an invalid. Like poorly patched glass. Not at all like a bomb that could go off or a live wire that must be watched.  No one is worried anymore about what Clint might do; he can’t defend himself and he can’t hurt them—he’s a beaten creature. De-clawed. Toothless. Helpless.

 “ _Are_ you okay, sir?” the loud woman asks, pointedly ignoring Steve, all but elbowing Natasha out of the way to get into Clint’s face.

He’s caught. It’s over. There’s no point in involving the police and scaring any bystanders when it won’t make any difference, no benefit in being dragged back to SHIELD shrieking and flailing. Clint Barton has an indefinite future of indignity to look forward to—medications and rooms with furniture bolted down, locks on the outside of every door—and by God he’ll grasp whatever handful of self-respect he can reach now, in this moment.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

His voice sounds shaky, but everything and everyone seems to sigh with relief at the declaration.  The woman looks doubtful, but also like she’s losing interest in pressing the matter. The small crowd that had been gathering around them breaks up, disappointed that brief drama hadn’t turned into a fight. Natasha relaxes back onto her heels but the Steve remains positioned behind, hands on Clint’s shoulders, ready to turn a comforting grip back into restraint in an instant.

Bruce extends a sweating bottle of water, then immediately snatches it away again and twists open the lid before forcing it into Clint’s hands. Clint lets it slide from his loose fingers and _thunk_ onto the ground, spilling water all over the sidewalk, running under the soles of Natasha’s shoes.

“Clint,” Natasha says, and the Not-Tony thing says the same thing in the same moment, echoes “Clint.”

It sounds just like Tony. It looks just like Tony. What’s more, it looks like the _old_ Tony, the real Tony, the first Tony—and moreso than Clint’s ever has. Clint’s is thin from a diet of peanut butter sandwiches and water, hollow eyed from sleepless nights and too much driving, his wrists raw and weeping from handcuffs. This morning he had put on the shirt Clint that wore yesterday, the red one with the stretched-out collar, one of the four shirts they pass back and forth.

This version, this Not-Tony, is wearing clean clothes that fit. He has a neat haircut and no dark circles under his eyes; he’s been sleeping in proper beds and eating well. No one hunts him. The Avengers and the entirety of SHIELD are taking care of him instead of just Hawkeye, and they're doing everything right.

“Tony, come on, back off," Steve scolds. "Give him a minute; he’s had a shock.”

Bruce presses a new bottle of water into Clint’s hands, closes his fingers gently around it. “He was supposed to wait. I'm sorry he didn't. We wanted to tell you the right way.”

The right way. How was that, wrapping Not-Tony up in a box and yelling _surprise!_ as he popped out? More likely it meant being cautiously re-introduced by a patient psychiatrist, starting by existing placidly in the same room together. Next they might attempt conversations before working their way up to being teammates again. Clint will be sent back to the Tower to watch this thing caper about and live Tony’s life.

“It’s really him.” Bruce again. Clint barely hears him. It doesn’t matter what Bruce says. “Really Tony.”

“SHIELD found him not long after you took off.” Steve keeps his voice quiet in consideration to the fact that his mouth is directly behind Clint’s ear. “We thought we’d lost you both, but then Fury called. It was like a miracle.”

“I’ll bet.” Clint was one of Fury’s best disciples for twenty years; he knows all about the man’s miracles.

And, just like that, he feels angry. It’s more than the irritation he feels around his Tony, more than that general ache betrayal, more than the quick rage he’d felt toward the people That Day in Research and Development, that horrible day worthy of capital letters. Clint feels angry, and it’s good to feel something, good to feel it cutting right through the veil of mourning and disquiet that he had tried to see through for the last year, the veil Natasha kept trying to shout through. The anger feels red and warm and infuses every limb and he feels fucking _alive_ again.

“Clint,” Natasha says again. It's like she doesn’t know any other words. 

Clint took down six people to get Tony out of that lab That Day, then nursed him back to health in motel room beds. Laid cool washcloths on Tony's forehead, spooned microwaved soup patiently into his mouth, all the time ignoring the way his own hands shook as his body ached from withdrawal of too many medications. Clint saved him, brought him back, but it's all for nothing now if Tony dies of dehydration in a motel room closet, his body eventually discovered by a screaming housekeeper.

It can’t have been for nothing. Clint won’t let it be.

He isn’t an Avenger. He's probably not even a SHIELD agent after all that he’s done. He is weaponless, trapped, and outnumbered by far stronger people. But he’s also Hawkeye, he's angry, and he's beaten worse odds before.

It’s time for one last show.

 

*

“I wanted it to be him.” Clint's voice sounds rusty and unwilling, like a car engine slow to warm. “But it wasn’t. It never was.” It. _It._ Their word is sour in his mouth, but necessary if he wants to do this right. “I knew the real Tony was gone, but I wanted it to be him so badly.”

His voice catches on the last word, quavering easily—more of thing he lets happen rather than something planned and executed. He’s so goddamned tired.

“We know,” Steve croons, patting Clint’s shoulder over and over in the same spot. “God, Clint, we _all_ wanted that.”

“And then… _it_ died and I didn’t know how to come back. How to admit how _wrong_ I had been.” The world loves guilt; everyone is a sucker for a sob story, a redemption story, and the Avengers are no different. Natasha looks away. Steve moves from patting to rubbing Clint’s shoulders, tenderizing him like meat. Bruce has actual tears in his eyes. “I was scared. And so…confused.”

 “We’ll figure it all out together,” Bruce promises. “Just come home with us. You don’t have to do anything, just rest and let us take care of everything.”

Come back, come home. That's all they've ever wanted. Now the team has gotten its Iron Man back, and want him too, the longing naked in their eyes. Hawkeye is the victory, the rarer prize, because unlike Tony Stark, Clint Barton is a limited edition.

“Okay. I’ll come home.”

Their surge of joy is almost a physical thing. Bruce beams, radiating relief, and Natasha closes her eyes with a sigh. Not-Tony grins at Steve, who still hovers somewhere behind Clint’s head, probably smiling back.

“I’ll go,” Clint continues, “but not with _you._ "

Natasha’s eyes snap open and he knows he’s hit his mark.

"You and I are done."

Clint believes in ruthless pragmatism every bit as much as Natasha, she of the false promises and the missing poster, and it’s her own fault if he knows how to wound her back. She would have said or done anything to flush Clint out, believing it was worth scourging their friendship if he would somehow get well again. She doesn’t believe that anymore, and the guilt is all over her face.

“And I won't go with _you_ , either.” Clint doesn’t turn but still manages to throw the statement behind himself, feels Steve Rogers recoil at the words. “Not after what you did.”

He doesn’t have any hard feelings about that horrible day at the range, the forced shooting, wasn’t even mad about it when it was happening, but he knows Steve. That day was an abuse of friendship and power, a moral failure, and Captain America will have let it eat at him ever since, rend his flesh with a thousand invisible tears.

“I _never_ meant to hurt—” Steve doesn’t finish the thought, just leaves it hanging there, and also doesn’t do anything to stop Clint when he moves out from under his hands.

“I’ll go back, but I can’t go with you two.” This time the careful accusation sweeps up both Steve and Natasha together. He can’t have them nearby; Steve’s too strong and she knows Clint too well. They have to be cut off from the others. Excised.  “I can’t trust you anymore. I just can’t.”

 Steve’s face is a study in self loathing, Natasha’s one of numb shock. 

“What about me?” Bruce steps neatly into the trap, happy to be the peacemaker, happy to be the hero for once, even if the role comes by attrition. “Can you go with _me_? Huh? What do you think?” He ghosts his hands over Clint’s face and arms, working in a featherlight medical exam under the guise of attentive comfort, a perfect example of fretful multitasking. “I’ll get you home and we’ll go from there. We can figure everything else out.”

“Okay.”

 “Wait.”

Bruce holds out a hand, smiling carefully, and Clint takes it.

“Wait,” Natasha says again, blinking at their clasped hands, and Clint has never heard her sound so insubstantial, so unsure. “You can’t—” She has all of his weapons in her pockets but suddenly she’s the one that is unarmed. Weakened. Diminished.  “You can’t trust him. Not even for a second. You have to watch him. Bruce. _Bruce._ ”

“Okay,” he agrees dismissively, and pulls Clint from the chair, snakes a solicitous arm around his waist. “It’s not far,” he promises, ignoring Natasha trailing behind them. “It’s that car right there, see? The blue one.”

Clint sags into him a little theatrically, lets Bruce walks him like an invalid, step after careful step. Not-Tony orbits them like an anxious moon until they get to a blue car, which he presents with an awkward flourish. Clint shuffles to a stop beside the front passenger door, plants his feet in spite of Bruce’s continued gentle pulling. A decided stop, a not-walking-anymore kind stop.

“Maybe you should sit in the back?” Bruce’s voice is overly friendly, cajoling. “You could lay down and rest.” Bruce keeps smiling, but his eyes are on people who have begun to slow down around them, watching and listening, curious about the scene playing out. “Hmm? What do you think?”

Clint just stands there, waiting. Natasha scans the street for the car Clint came in, his keys in her hand, pulling Steve along behind her. Clint just keeps standing there until Not-Tony finally tugs the front door open and gives him a gentle shove inside.

Not-Tony doesn’t ask if he can ride along, doesn’t ask if he can drive, just assumes both, elbowing his way into the situation, and that would be annoying if it weren’t just right, everyone positioning themselves almost exactly where Clint wants them to be.

People are definitely recognizing the Avengers now, murmurs of _Hey, isn’t that_ and _Oh my god I think it is_ rippling through a growing crowd. Phones come out of pockets and are held up to the car windows. Steve smiles reassuringly, stepping in between the people and the car, raising his hands in his signature Captain-America-placates-the-masses gesture.

“It’s alright, folks. Nothing to see here; everything is fine. We have everything under control.”

 _No you fucking don’t,_ Clint thinks, and buckles his seatbelt.

 

 

*

It feels odd after all these weeks for Tony to be the one driving while Clint huddles in the passenger seat, his back flattened against the doorframe so he can keep both Bruce and Not-Tony in his sights.

Clint might be captured, might be hurtling toward SHIELD and an uncertain future, but he’s going to get them as far away from the hotel and his Tony as possible before making his move. The miles tick away, and Clint fights down that stretched, tense feeling, telling himself that every minute is important, that every bit of distance buys _his_ Tony more safety, more life.

In the meantime, he can’t make himself stop staring.

And neither can Not-Tony, his little darting glances punctuated by smiles when he catches Clint looking back. Clint presses himself more firmly into the door, the handle pressing uncomfortably into his back. They’ve been on the highway for twenty-one minutes. He wants to give it an hour, but his chest feels too tight, like it’s going to snap. He doesn’t want to wait. He wants it to happen now.

“—looking for you. We even tried to get hold of Thor, to ask if he could—”

Bruce sits unbuckled on the edge of the backseat, as close as he can get to the others, keeps reaching out slightly before drawing his hand back, heroically resisting the impulse to touch. Clint and Tony had always been the team chatterboxes, keeping up an endless stream of observations and jokes and good-natured barbs, but now they are both quiet while Bruce is the one that goes on endlessly.

“It was a really bad time for us all and we weren’t doing so well. Natasha was so upset and Steve kept bringing up how—” Bruce cuts himself off with an unhappy laugh. “Anyway, it was hard. I can’t tell you how hard it was. "

He doesn't need to. Clint knows. He already knows this story as well as if he had been there.

Tony was dead, Clint crazy, Natasha halfway out the door, hoping to find him. Thor was as absent as always, and the Hulk and Captain America on their own hardly constituted a functional team. The Avengers were tired of mourning. Tired of hoping. Tired of disappointment. The Avengers were falling apart, but Nick Fury knew of a way to pull them back together again. He offered them a reason to stay together, and the team just…let it happen. Let themselves believe Fury’s insistence that it was all real, let this well-dressed, well-fed thing become their new Tony Stark.

 “—amazing to have him back. To have _you_ back.” Bruce leans forward and squeezes Not-Tony’s shoulder. “And it was actually him this time. Not like those others. Nothing like that. He knew us, knew Pepper, he remembered everything that ever happened to—”

 _I found him,_ Clint hears himself tell Natasha on the phone That Day. _He knew me_.

“Shit,” Clint spits reflexively, his first word in—he shifts to check the odometer before bracing himself back against the door—thirty-seven miles. Not-Tony gives him a surprised look and Bruce is startled into a beat of silence.

 “Clint.” His voice is too gentle, immediately telegraphing the next question. “What happened to—?” Bruce glances uneasily at Not-Tony and shrugs with an apologetic, wincing smile. “Where is its body?”

 It. Tony. _His_ Tony. Clint closes his eyes. _It_. His Tony might not be the real Tony any more than this one driving the car, but he’s still _someone_. Someone that thinks and laughs and misses the old life he thinks he remembers, and all the people in it. Someone that Clint has to get back to and protect.

“I buried him in a cow field.”  Clint remembers Tony laughing and leaning too far out of the truck window. _I thought cows had horns. And bells around their necks._ He swallows hard, trying to keep from bouncing his knees, tapping his foot.

Thirty-eight miles.

Bruce’s eyes are big and understanding and sad. “How?”

“I—” _forgot him in the trunk of a car, suffocated him a closet, accidentally broke his neck while we were fighting over handcuffs._ Clint trails off, unable to form the words. He hasn’t killed his Tony, not yet, but things were falling so steadily apart that it has always been just a matter of time. But Bruce and Not-Tony are still waiting for an answer, and he wants them to believe it, wants them not to go looking for that hotel once Clint manages to escape. “I don’t know how it happened. I woke up one day and he was just dead.”

His voice cracks on the last word and this time Bruce can’t resist; he leans forward and rubs a hand along Clint’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” he croons sympathetically. “Shh, it’s okay.”

He should leave it there, accept the words for what they are, because Bruce means well. He _always_ means well. Bruce, who has a monster inside of him and never wants to hurt anyone. Clint should accept the comment graciously and continue to count the miles—thirty-nine, now—and not respond the way he wants to, with something sharp and cutting and snarling. It’s too soon, they’re not nearly as far away as he would like, and he’s not going to be able to help it and he's going to ruin everything because he can’t keep his shit together, can’t keep a stranglehold on the emotions that run so close to the surface these days.

“It’s _not_ , though,” he snaps. “It’s actually _not_ okay that he’s dead.”

“No. It isn’t,” Not-Tony agrees quietly, and Clint’s eyes cut over to him, glaring.

“You’re right, I’m sor—” Bruce begins, but Clint interrupts with, “Do you know the songs?”

 Not-Tony says nothing, visibly uncomfortable.

“The ones from commercials. The Band-Aid song,” Clint pushes on, knowing they don’t understand and beyond caring. “Crest Soap. Lucky Charms.”

“Clint—” Bruce and Not-Tony's eyes meet in the rearview mirror.

“You do, don’t you? I bet you _all_ roll off the assembly line knowing those little jingles. Every funny anecdote, all the stories. You know what Pepper would want for Christmas, remember Rhodey’s favorite color. You can all reminisce nostalgically about the time dear old Dad helped you fold paper airplanes, a tear in every eye. Whatever made you wants you to remember, wouldn’t have it any other way, because what good is a Tony Stark without memories?” Clint leans in a little toward Not-Tony, who keeps his eyes on the road, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles are white. “What use are you to _anyone_ if you can’t build them an arc reactor?”

Bruce clamps his hand down on Clint’s shoulder, not hard enough to hurt, trying to ground him, or quiet him a little. “Don’t pay any attention,” he says apologetically to Not-Tony. “This is how it was all the months before he took off. He doesn't even know what he's saying, really. He can’t help it; he’s sick.”

“I know, it’s fine,” Not-Tony says, his throat tight, and Clint laughs.

“All of you are nothing but a collection of stories and trivia that don’t add up to _anything_. They don’t make you the same _person_.”

“Okay, Clint. Okay, that’s enough.” Bruce sits back in his seat, face grim and disappointed and unsurprised.

He pulls out his phone, and Clint knows that he's going to call Steve and Natasha and tell them that things are falling apart, that he needs backup after all. The car hasn’t gone nearly far enough from town but that doesn’t matter anymore, because Bruce is busy muttering into his phone and Not-Tony is clenching his jaw and deliberately not looking at Clint and it’s perfect.

It’s all perfect.

“So, it’s actually _not_ okay if my Tony died. He was in the world and he was alive; he felt happiness and fear and he was my friend. Maybe he wasn’t the real Tony Stark, but he was _someone_ , goddamn you!”

Clint launches himself away from the car door and jerks the steering wheel hard with both hands.

 

*

 He feels the exact moment that the wheels leave the pavement.

 And the sickening one that the car becomes airborne.

 But he barely registers the pain when the car hits the ground and folds against his legs with terrible weight.

The flying glass stings a little, but Clint’s eyes close in time.

Something in his chest snaps, almost as an afterthought.

And then the Hulk is roaring.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize SO MUCH for how long it's been between updates. I'll be honest and admit that I haven't been feeling well lately, and working on a big depressing fic just wasn't the healthiest of choices.
> 
> But here it is! And it's almost the end--the last chapter should be an epilogue split between Tony and Clint. If it gets to be too unwieldy I'll divide it into two separate chapters instead.

 

*

It’s not the first time Clint Barton has run on a maybe-broken leg. Or with definitely-broken ribs or a probably-broken arm. It’s not the first time he’s run from a car accident or even from a roaring Hulk.

 

*

Clint told the story of the pileup on the interstate—not caused by Tony’s car, which had careened and flipped a safe distance away, but by all the rubberneckers that came afterward, gawking at the damage—looking appropriately wide-eyed and shaky. The emergency room was a cacophony of minor bloody injuries and Clint had fit right in, going unnoticed amongst all the others. Faced with a sudden onslaught of patients, the tiny county hospital has called in all their personnel, and Clint’s fairly certain that the medical resident now stitching his scalp, while very competent, isn’t technically allowed to work unsupervised yet.  

Clint holds himself carefully, revealing nothing of the arm that might be broken or of the ribs that certainly are. He has no intention of waiting around for x-rays and casts, but stitches are necessary. And while he’s no stranger to patching himself up in strange, dirty bathrooms on the road, he’ll always take a more sterile option, if available.

As an added bonus, the Avengers will never think to search for Clint Barton in a hospital.

 “Where are you from?”

It’s a harmless, idle question—almost everyone from that highway accident is from somewhere else; this nowhere town is nobody’s final destination. The doctor couldn’t care less where Clint’s actually from, but it’s a standard question, and an anticipated one, and Clint had already sketched out a rudimentary backstory before he even reached the hospital parking lot. The trick is never to attempt to blend in seamlessly, but to become overlooked. To be seen and then discarded from notice, to be pushed right out of memory. The first step is picking a home state that no one ever seems to actually be from—Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma—before adding in a forgettably common first name—John, Mike, Joe. Then, if possible, throw in a hint of something vaguely unpleasant.

 “My family and I are on our way to Nauvoo to tour the temple.”

The resident's hands immediately begin to move a little faster now, stitching quickly, and Clint knows he’s done it just right. Nothing makes people more uncomfortable than a dash of religion, or makes someone want to escape a conversation more than the threat of proselytization. Clint twists the knife a little further, sighing, “I guess this crash is just Heavenly Father testing me.”

His voice sounds so normal, it almost sounds true. He _could_ be on his way to Illinois. He could be an unlucky motorist caught up in a largescale accident that wasn’t his fault. At this moment he could be anyone. He doesn’t have to be Clint Barton, an escaped Avenger, a SHIELD agent gone pathetically rogue.

 

*

He steals a car from the hospital parking lot in full view of the cameras and leaves a poorly concealed trail going west. A credit card from that nice doctor’s swiped wallet—Clint’s financial crime spree doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon—buys an American flag t-shirt and a pair of sunglasses at a gas station. He overexaggerates his limp and lingers long enough at the ICEE machine for people to make note of the bruising and bandages.

 

*

Years ago, he hurt himself jumping down from atop the animal cages.

It was still in the Barton brothers’ early days in the circus, but the newness and excitement had already worn off the adventure, the shine disappearing to expose the tarnish beneath, when Clint misjudged his leap, scraping his side along a sharp corner. He bound up the wound and ignored it until he absolutely couldn’t, when it became red and swollen and started weeping yellow fluid instead of scabbing over like it should. There were no parents around to fuss over Clint and make him better—just a fifteen year old brother that was angry about everything, a bunch of adults that never wanted the orphaned kids around in the first place, and an increasingly jealous mentor who would gladly see Clint thrown out on his ear at any opportunity. So during the day he kept it covered so no one would see the ugly, jagged thing, and at night he watched it get worse and worse, saying nothing, bearing the fever, letting it all happen, letting his flesh begin to rot away.

He feels the same way now, that same vague, detached curiosity as he drives one handedly, his throbbing left arm held awkwardly immobilized by the seatbelt. Once that would have terrified him, the possibility of an injured arm, but now it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t care.

The radio only offers up a mix of country music or men ranting about Jesus, so Clint turns it off, rolls down the window, and belts out “Born Free”. His mom used to play that record when Dad was out, vacuuming and singing and grinning at Clint and Barney, happy whenever it was just the three of them, when it was safe. Once Clint had known all the words to the song, but now he’s forgotten them, so he just repeats the first few lines over and over, forcing the words out of a throat that feels tight, too tight.

Later he inhales a huge meal from a McDonald’s drive thru while sitting in their parking lot, throwing it all back up into the bag minutes later.

And later still his body jerks suddenly, painfully, his good hand gripping reflexively on the steering wheel, straightening the tires back out on the highway, realizing that he had almost fallen asleep. He’s been running on adrenaline and anger and terror for weeks and now it’s all catching up with him, catching up with him in a more dangerous way than the Avengers ever could.

Clint keeps thinking that this is it, that he’s going to fall apart, going to break, but it just keeps not happening.

 

*

He gets a new car and abruptly heads south, this time doing a much better job covering his tracks, though not a perfect one. He allows one gas station camera to catch his profile and is just curt enough when buying a cup of coffee that a convenience store clerk might remember him, or at least his American flag t-shirt and the black line of fresh stitches across his forehead.

Then Clint ditches that car for another one and he heads back to the hotel, to Tony, and this time he leaves no trail at all.

 

*

He sits in the parking lot for one hour.

Waiting is the most important part of evasion, the part that most people don’t have the patience for, and along with his aim that ability for stillness has always been Clint’s personal superpower. Being able to wait and watch when what he really wants to do is sprint inside. To pull Tony from the closet, undo the handcuffs, apologize and fill him up with food and water while apologizing some more, making him be well again, making him be _alive_ again.

But instead Clint makes himself wait, scanning the parking lot for Avengers, for cops, for any familiar faces from SHIELD. He makes himself wait exactly sixty minutes and then tries to control the limp as he works his way to the front door of the hotel, forcing himself not to rush. He smiles ruefully at the kid at the front desk, spins a sad tale about being mugged, doing his best not to grab for the new keycard too eagerly when it's offered. He does it all just right, makes himself walk slowly to the elevators, keeps his posture easy and unconcerned for the sake of the cameras within.

But when the elevator doors open to their floor, Clint runs.

 

*

He swipes the card once, twice, three times before the little light goes green, throws the door open and is at the closet in two bounding, painful steps.

“Tony.” Clint pulls the sock out and Tony’s mouth just hangs open. His eyes are slitted and unseeing, but he’s breathing. Clint can _see_ him breathing. “Please.”

The handcuff key feels so small in his shaking hands as Clint stabs ineffectually at the tiny lock, missing again. Missing again. Missing _again._ It’s like every nightmare he’s ever had about misdialing 911 or fumbling with bomb wires being made reality, and Tony’s limp under his hands.

_Sorry sorry sorry sorry_

He’s saying it out loud, too, a frantic cadence that mirrors his inner screaming refrain as he misses the lock again. Clint’s breathing turns into big whooping gulps and if anyone overhears and decides to investigate it’s over for them because Clint looks like a madman and Tony looks dead and Clint _still_ can’t get the fucking handcuffs open.

 “Please.” The tiny key falls from his fingertips and Clint groans in frustration, digging blindly in the pile of the carpet until he feels it. “ _Please_.” Aims for the lock and misses. Misses again. “Please, God, let me do it.”

 _The Amazing Hawkeye_ , he thinks wildly, and a laugh rises unbidden in his throat. He can see the ringmaster flinging a long arm outward to present Clint’s grinning, younger self—The Amazing Hawkeye. And it was easy to strut out into the spotlight because teenaged Clint knew he’d always hit his mark, believed that he would _never_ miss, that he wasn’t _capable_ of missing, that he never would grow up and grow weak and someday not even be able to—

The click of the lock is as loud as a gunshot, and the feel of the release is bliss. Tony’s leg hits the floor with a thud. Clint doesn’t even have time to panic about the second set of cuffs because the key strikes true on the first attempt and the handcuffs just fall away.

What he doesn’t expect is for Tony to spring suddenly to life in that same moment, pivoting and lunging and slamming the open cuff down onto Clint’s own wrist. His mind just can’t process it—Tony seemingly dead one moment and then in motion in another, the two of them suddenly handcuffed together, Clint just blinking at his shackled hand even though he’s still got the handcuff key in the other.

“Wait—” Tony says, and Clint hears running footsteps a breath too late, too late to do anything before a pair of arms wraps around him, restraining, holding him tight, too tight.

 _Steve_ , he thinks.

But then he’s hit with what feels like a million volts of electricity, and nope.

It’s Natasha.

 

*

He wakes up in one of the two queen sized beds. Natasha sits cross-legged on the other, watching him with her chin resting in her hands, her expression blandly unreadable. In one corner of the room Tony— _Clint’s_ Tony—is perched on the edge of a chair, alive and looking relatively healthy. And in the opposite corner Barney Barton is sitting sideways in yet another chair, one leg dangling over the arm, attempting an air of nonchalance but ruining the effect by chewing on his lip furiously. The four of them in different corners, all taking one another in with varying degrees of wariness.

It’s a lot to process—that Tony is in the same room with Natasha and she’s not murdering him. That Clint’s been obviously passed out for some time and SHIELD hasn’t burst in to claim him. That Barney is here at all. Clint's first instinct is to fly out of the bed and put himself between Natasha and Tony, but he can’t move. They haven’t restrained him, he just can’t move. It’s finally happened; he’s bled out. He’s done. He’s beaten.

“Everything is okay,” Tony says, and three other sets of eyes swing in his direction, settle upon his pale face and hollowed features. “Nothing is gonna happen.”

Clint isn’t sure if that’s an attempt at reassurance or just some wishful thinking, because Barney mutters, “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

 

*

The story comes out in bits and pieces, mostly supplied by Tony in the occasional silences as Barney and Natasha argue vehemently over who is going to take Clint to the hospital, both of them insistent that the other isn’t smart enough to anticipate any potential escape attempts. His maybe-broken arm is definitely broken now; he’d gone down like a sack of potatoes under Natasha’s taser and landed right on it.

As it turns out Clint hadn’t needed to drive all night, hadn't need to rush back to the hotel at all; Tony had been in the closet less than an hour before Barney arrived. The older Barton had finally given over to his unease from their strange visit and went to find them, the process as easy as tracking the credit cards that he had dealt Clint over the years.

Clint throws his brother a dirty look at that particular revelation, which Barney imitates perfectly, adding in an eyebrow raised in accusation— _What did you expect? You were in trouble_.

Barney and Tony had waited together all that day and most of the next for Clint to come back, and when it became apparent that he had gotten in some sort of trouble Barney had gone for the nuclear option and called Natasha. She made her way back from where she and Steve had been following Clint’s second false trail, arriving only a few hours before Clint.

 

*

Natasha wins the hospital argument, mostly because, despite the apparent détente, Clint still doesn’t trust her to be left alone in a room with Tony. She trails Clint back to his stolen vehicle, hands in her pockets and deliberately not touching him, even when he staggers a bit on the uneven parking lot.

 “I’m sorry I broke your arm,” she says as she starts the car, smiling good-naturedly.

Clint rests his head against the window. It feels so cool and soothing that he wonders fleetingly if he has a fever. Probably not. He’s probably just tired. Really fucking tired. “I don’t think you did; it was already pretty fucked up.”

Natasha hits the turn signal with more force than is necessary, the sharp _thwack_ of her palm followed by the innocuous _tick tick tick_. She’s angry. She’s a spring of coiled rage and cold tension but her voice is still light and almost effervescent as she remarks, “Excellent job on that car crash, by the way. I knew you’d pull _something_ but the intensity of your approach really took me by surprise.”

“Well, whatever works, right?”

She _mmhmms_ pleasantly, as though he can’t hear her teeth grinding beneath the smile. “Bruce is fine, in case you were curious. I’m sure you just forgot to ask. And you may or may not be happy to hear that Tony is also alright.”

“ _Your_ Tony.” It’s stupid to antagonize Natasha when she’s angry and he’s helpless, but Clint can’t stop himself; the distinction is that important.

“My Tony,” she agrees readily. JARVIS murmurs directions to the nearest hospital and Natasha glares at her phone, still grinning. “You were lucky to walk out of that wreck alive, you know. You could have died.”

“I knew I wouldn’t.”

“You did _not_ fucking know that!”

Clint startles as her mask vanishes, braces his broken arm painfully as she jerks the car to the side of the road and to a stop. She turns to face him, eyes wild and furious and part of him is sure that this is the day she’ll kill him, friendship or not, that’s he’s pushed her too far and now she’ll retaliate by dismantling Clint Barton piece by piece.

But Natasha does far worse. She weeps.

Clint has never heard her cry before. He’s seen her teary now and then—at unexpectedly sentimental movies or books, during hard missions. At Phil’s funeral, of course, and again at Tony’s—but he’s never heard her cry, never heard loud sobs rip their way through her throat, hoarse and raw and unwilling. Natasha cries as if doing so physically hurts, and it hurts Clint too, because the Black Widow may be crying a little for herself but it's mostly over him. _For_ him.

They’d been so angry at one another, so hurt, but still she followed when he ran, came running when Barney called. Their story doesn’t end with them apart, in different places, facing different directions, not after all they’ve been through together, after all they’ve seen. And suddenly Clint knows why he teetered so long on the edge, why the breakdown kept looming and threatening and just never arriving—because it _couldn’t_ happen until now, until they were together again. Best friends, partners, soul mates, the hearts that always beat just alike, breaking alike.

Clint paws at his face with one clumsy hand, wiping away the wetness there, then goes digging in the glove compartment, finding it to be—as most glove compartments are—full of fast food napkins. He drops one of them into Natasha’s lap and dabs at her tear streaked cheeks with another, awkward as he leans across the middle console to reach her with his working hand.

“Don’t cry,” he croons desperately, and she grabs his hand and holds it to her forehead, taking a few shaky breaths.

“We still had each other, didn’t we? Phil was gone, Tony was gone, but I was still there, Clint. I was right fucking there.” Her voice is slightly shuddery as she surrenders his hand to blot at her eyes and cheeks, the weeping onslaught suddenly over almost as fast as it began. “But I wasn't enough for you. Instead I got to watch you get sick. I got to watch you slide farther and farther away and know that I couldn’t catch you. Couldn’t fight my way to where you were.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, because he is. He always has been.

“Did you know—” She cuts off the thought with a click of her teeth, shakes her head and takes a deep breath before trying again. “Did you know that in the beginning, when SHIELD did all those tests, I hoped they’d find something wrong with you. I hoped that they’d find a tumor, a brain parasite, some hormone or chemical out of whack—anything that could be identified and treated. I fucking _prayed_ for that. And that’s how you know things are bad; when you’re desperate for your best friend to have a brain tumor.” Her voice is both broken and hollow, the echo of old anger and her own powerlessness. “It’s like you were doing it on _purpose_ somehow. Like you’d chosen the one nightmare I couldn’t wake you from, the one kind of fight I wasn’t good at—that _none_ of us were good at. Every single thing we ever tried made you even worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And then you ran.” It’s an accusation, but there’s no anger behind it. Not this time. Not anymore. “You were gone and you were sick and I couldn’t find you.”

“You didn’t believe me,” Clint counters, but he’s not angry either; he’s too exhausted. He crumples the wet napkins in his fist and presses back into the seat. “About Tony.” Natasha sighs at the name. She probably hates hearing it, at least hearing it fall from his lips. “We’re friends. Partners. You were supposed to believe me even if nobody else would.”

“How could I? You wouldn’t eat. You laid around all day but wouldn’t sleep. You spent half the day staring like a zombie and the other half freaking out and weaving conspiracy theories.” Natasha spreads her hands helplessly. “You were diagnosed with a full blown dissociative disorder by every shrink Fury could dredge up. Clint, how _could_ I believe you??”

That isn’t the way he remembers it. He remembers being drugged and caught in a whirlwind of exhaustion and hypervigilance and certainty that the world around him was wrong. He tries to picture it her way, to overlay what he remembers with her harsher recollections—trying to reconcile his attempts to quell the horrible pervading panic with _staring like a zombie_ , his drive to convince the others that SHIELD had Tony with _weaving conspiracy theories_.

“I’m not crazy,” he insists, latching onto the one thing he’s sure of. What he’d seen in the lab that day was the proof; that Tony is alive today is the proof. “I was _right_.”

Natasha scrubs her hands against her face, pausing to sigh into her palms, gathering herself back together. She peers over her fingertips out the front windshield, taking in the world still going on cheerfully around them, oblivious to their human drama.

“You _were_ right,” she agrees finally. “You were, and I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, that I didn’t have your back.” She makes as if to take his nearest hand, then remembers the broken arm at the last minute and squeezing his knee instead. “You were right, but you’re also sick. You’re soul sick. We _all_ are—you, me, Steve, Bruce, and T—” her voice catches on the name and she clenches her jaw briefly again before she manages to say, “—and Tony. You just stopped being able to hide it as well as we could.”

Clint stares out the windshield too. Cars fly by them on the same interstate where Clint had flipped the car not two days before, full of people with unassuming names like John, Mike, and Joe, headed to places that no one ever seems to end up—Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, or maybe even a temple in Nauvoo. The wrecked car is gone but the ground is probably still littered with bits of glass and metal. Clint’s blood. Not-Tony’s blood.

 “What happens now?” He can’t imagine what happens next. He hadn’t planned on an _after_.

Natasha flips down her visor mirror and wrinkles her nose at her reflection, combs her fingers aggressively through her hair. “We get your arm and anything else that might be broken fixed, and then we go back to the hotel. Then we focus on helping Tony, however he wants us to. _Together_ this time. You and me together, the way it always should have been.”

 

*

And that should be it, that should be the end.

Two friends back in one another’s arms; Clint finished running, Natasha headed toward reconciliation with Tony. For the first time in a long time there is relief and hope and the feeling that somehow things might end up alright after all. If life were a story or a movie, _this_ would be its end, the credits rolling with Clint and Natasha together again, wiping away tears, ready for a brighter future.

But it isn’t the end.

Instead they drive to the hospital in an awkward, if somewhat companionable, silence. The doctor takes in the older stitches and bruises and the newly broken arm and has nothing but questions and suspicions and Clint is about to climb the walls when Natasha draws the doctor out into the hallway. God knows what she says; probably something both horrible and true. After they return the doctor is gentle and calming and the way he treats Clint like a fragile child makes Clint want to die from the shame of it all.

Instead he closes his eyes and lets the doctor work on one arm while Natasha lightly grips the other, waits for this all to be over and for the next thing to start.

 

*

When fifteen-year-old Barney had discovered that infected cut down Clint’s side, he’d manhandled his brother down to his knees into the muddy ground beneath the freezing outdoor spigot. Barney pulled up Clint’s shirt and scrubbed the wound hard with the bar of green soap that was always left nearby, worn down to a sliver by too many hands. _You have to be smarter_ , he shouted, angry, the way he always was back then. But scared, too, seeing that injury. _No one is going to take care of us, Clint. No one_. Washing and tearing the thin scab away and opening the area further, hurting, hurting a _lot_ but fixing things the only way he knew how.

For a long time that had ranked as the kindest thing Barney ever did for his brother.

Now, decades later, they’re back in an eerily similar position.  Clint’s arm is propped outside of the shower on Barney’s shoulder—the thin plastic bag from the hotel trashcan unequal to the task of keeping the new cast dry. Clint is stuck holding his left arm stiffly out of the spray and trying to wash everything one handed while Barney hovers ineffectually, offering assistance here and there but mostly getting in the way, grumbling all the while.

“You’re getting water fucking _everywhere_ , Clint, Jesus Christ!!”

This is more like the brother that Clint recognizes, more like the one he grew up with—short tempered and prickly, easily offended, the brother who beat Clint up hundreds of times, the brother that stood aside and watched as the Swordsman cut him to pieces. But it’s also the brother that made him twenty years’ worth of identities in apology, the one who’s now doing the same for Tony, making a new life possible. The brother that came looking when he knew Clint and Tony were in trouble and now letting Clint rest his broken arm rest on his shoulder, glaring as his clothes get wetter and wetter, irritated but making no move to leave.

“You don’t have to stay, you know.” Clint fumbles with the hotel-provided bottle of shampoo—despairing that they always have to be so tiny, and always seem to have twist tops—before Barney grabs it with a theatrical sigh, opens it, hands it back. “I can take care of myself.”

 “Suuuuure.” Barney draws the word out meaningfully. “You’ve really done a b—Goddamnit, Clint, I’ll shove that shampoo bottle up your _ass_ if you get me wet one more time!”

Clint grins a little but then thinks of Phil standing outside of a dozen safehouse bathrooms, scolding him for using all the hot water, and of Tony, handcuffed and terrified while Clint lost time braced against a bathroom door— _I thought you’d killed yourself in there_. And something weak and wavering and alarming must play across his face because Barney’s scowl softens a few degrees.

“Barney.”

 “Come on, finish up.” He goes for brusque irritation instead of coddling concern, snapping his fingers loudly when Clint continues to just stand there. “Don’t be such a baby.”

“I don’t know what’s next,” Clint says.

“Wash your hair. Come on, top to bottom, just like always. _That’s_ what’s next. Just get through one thing after another.”

 

*

Natasha is gone—but no further away than the lobby of the hotel; she still doesn’t trust Clint—meeting with Fury and Steve, planning out what happens next. Clint had declined to be a part of that conversation, choosing to stay in the room with Tony and Barney instead.  His participation would be no more than token anyway; those three will decide what happens next, what happens to Clint Barton.

Barney is on the telephone with his girlfriend—endless repetitions and variations of  _Oh, is that right? Huh._ _What you’d say then? Oh. So what did he say? Oh.—_ and suitably distracted when Clint says to Tony, “Now’s the time to make our move.”

It would be different this time. Clint is more rested, has fed up a bit, feels clearer headed. He could get them farther and do better, especially if Tony is a complete and willing partner. Clint promised Natasha that there would be no more running and he hates to break that promise, but he will. For Tony.

“That’s not a good idea,” Tony says, after a too long pause.

“You can’t seriously believe that they’ll let you leave.” Natasha might have made her peace with Tony’s existence, but Fury won’t ever let it go, especially not since he has his own personally appointed Tony Stark already installed in New York. He might let this Tony swim around in a new fishbowl for a year or two, but eventually Fury will decide to rid himself of a few loose ends and come calling.

“Don’t worry about me.” Tony’s eyes move to the pile of papers on the desk.  

Birth certificate. Driver’s license. Social Security card. Barney even has him registered him to vote. Those papers are all kept carefully angled away, ready to be swept into a pile by Barney or Natasha and neatened fussily whenever Clint wanders too close. He’s not supposed to know Tony’s new name or see the address printed there, won’t be told the town or even the state. _A clean break_. Nobody says that outright, but that’s what this is. A chance for Tony to start over.

That’s what Clint had wanted for him too, the very same thing, even took him to Barney to get the cards. He had wanted to Tony to live; he just hadn’t done it right. Hadn’t done _any_ of it right. He watches Tony’s eyes linger on those papers, recognizes that depth of longing in them.

Tony had also been invited to that meeting downstairs, but had declined without ever speaking to Steve or Fury. He wants those papers instead. He wants the life they promise, one away from Clint and SHIELD and the Avengers and all the things that are no longer his.

Clint reaches out to and grabs Tony’s wrist, turning it slightly, examining the dark circles left by the handcuffs. They’re bruised around the edges, shiny along the red parts where either Barney or Natasha—probably Natasha—carefully superglued the wounds shut. Fixing Clint’s mistake, or at least trying to make it better.

“I was right, wasn’t I? SHIELD had you. Then the team was chasing us. After you called Pepper.” Clint’s voice is a little too loud, a little too urgent, and Barney’s steady drone into the phone quiets suddenly, probably listening, but it doesn’t matter. He can go along with Natasha’s version of events whenever she’s around, but now she isn’t here, it’s just him and Tony again, and Clint has to know that he wasn’t always wrong, that at least some things went down the way he remembers. “I didn’t imagine that. They came. Right? Steve kicked the door in. Natasha had a gun. She pointed it right at you. Those things happened, didn’t they?”

“You told me not to call her.” Tony’s eyes are wounded and it must still hurt, the day he called Pepper Potts to tell her he loved her and that he was alive. He called for her help to get away from Clint but she'd sent the Avengers instead, wanting only to get rid of his ghost, wanting him gone for good. “You were right. You said they’d come and they did. You said they’d never believe me, that our old lives were over, and you were right about that, too.” His eyes dart back to the desk.

“I was right,” Clint repeats, letting Tony’s wrist drop, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. “I was right about that. And about you being alive.”

Tony nods and smiles tightly, more of a grimace than anything.

“But...maybe I was wrong about some other things,” Clint admits finally.

It hurts, those words hurt, because suddenly what’s important is not knowing what things were right or wrong, but that he doesn’t know where the line between the two was, or where it is now, or if he’ll be able to see it again. If he’ll ever be able to trust himself, if anyone else will.

“I haven’t felt very well lately. I don’t think I’ve felt well in a long fucking time."

“You did the best you could.” Tony shouldn’t be comforting him. Tony should hate him. “You were sick and scared to death but you got me out of that lab and kept me alive afterward. I won’t forget that, Clint. Not ever.”

“But, see, I’m feeling stronger now. Clearer.” It’s both true and a lie, and Clint grabs Tony’s wrist again. It must hurt like hell, superglue or no, but Tony lets him do it, doesn’t pull away. “I can do better. If you want to run, I would go with you and I _know_ that this time I could do better. We could leave right now.”

Tony sighs. He doesn’t look like his old self. He bears a passing resemblance to somebody famous, a rich man, an Avenger, someone who died. He doesn’t look like Tony Stark; he looks like the person he’s going to be now, someone living a lowkey life, in a place where Clint Barton will never be, with a name he’ll never be allowed to know.

“No,” Tony says, and pries Clint’s hand gently from his wrist. “No.”


End file.
